


掩耳盜鈴 - Covering Your Ears to Steal a Bell

by yunyu



Series: Clouds and Rain universe [5]
Category: Shin Sangokumusou | Dynasty Warriors, Three Kingdoms History & Adaptations - All Media Types
Genre: Ambition, Bisexual Male Character, Character Development, Child Death, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dirty Talk, Dominance, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Forced Marriage, Gen, I probably shouldn't post this but what the hell, Infidelity, M/M, Murder, Pirates, Redemption, Situational Humiliation, Stillbirth, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-10-27 09:00:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17763797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunyu/pseuds/yunyu
Summary: In late 2nd century AD China, Gan Ning always follows his whims, which usually involve wanton violence and murder, above and beyond what's required in his life as a pirate. But one day he follows a whim to make a young woman they capture his wife. And with a wife, maybe he should think about becoming something a little grander than a pirate...Please heed warnings! Although this is set in the same universe as my largely fluffy works "Clouds & Rain" and "Honey on a Lion's Mane", it is substantially darker than those works. The Gan Ning as depicted at the beginning of this work is essentially the psychopath that history tells us would wait in people's homes that he was robbing (rather than just taking their goods and leaving) just so that he would GET to kill someone.The Gan Ning/Ling Tong in the relationship tag is for later chapters (the first chapters are entirely set before Gan Ning is even hired by Huang Zu) and is one-sided.The Chinese idiom "掩耳盜鈴" which literally means "covering your ears to steal a bell" figuratively means "to deceive yourself".





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There’s some “fucking timelines, how do they work?” going on here. Dynasty Warriors wants people to participate in ALL THE BATTLES and have them be the same (visual/personality) age from first to last appearance. If you want to get really absurd, in Dynasty Warriors 8, Sun Shangxiang fights her first battle in the year 185 (Liang Province) and then shows up in the year 222 to bail out Liu Bei at Yiling, THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS LATER, and she hasn’t aged a day. Damn, I gotta get me some of that ancient Chinese beauty magic.
> 
> So anyway. This takes place in the same universe as Clouds and Rain, in which I wiggled my fingers and compressed the time between Chibi and Fan Castle to 5 years to make some characters ages/personality progressions make more sense. I’ve freely moved people around to make them the age I want, especially Zhou Tai.
> 
>  **“Don’t examine this too closely”** should probably be invoked.
> 
> I use style names in this work a little more accurately than in Clouds and Rain. Gan Ning's style name (a name, in ancient Chinese culture, used mostly by peers) is Xingba.

“Are you Master Gan, sir?”

Gan Ning looked up—quite a bit up—at the boy asking him the question. At least, despite the height, he thought it was a boy. The voice was youthful, and the face was bare because shaving was not yet necessary; but the boy was already taller than Gan Ning, and he had a certain gravitas to his manner.

“Who wants to know? You?” said the pirate, and his men laughed as if he had said something funny. Well, at this point in an evening of drinking it didn’t take much to get them laughing.

The boy bowed. “My name is Zhou Tai. I have heard Master Gan intends to sail up into Shouchun. I am willing to work hard.”

“If you can work hard, then I’m your captain,” said Gan Ning, “but aren’t you a bit young to decide to try piracy? Got any experience?”

“I’m fifteen. I know how to sail.”

“On a raiding ship?” More laughter from his crew.

The boy was unfazed. “A fishing boat.”

This time Gan Ning laughed, so his crew were uproarious. “A little fishing boat on Lake Chao? I don’t call that experience. What about fighting?”

“A little. I have a weapon.”

“Boys, did you hear? This one has a weapon! How impressive!” Gan Ning mocked, although he actually _was_ a little impressed that a kid this young was still neither embarrassed nor frightened. He decided to take him on. “You wanna go to Shouchun, huh? That means you’re going to ditch me as soon as you get there?”

The boy hesitated. “I can do the grunt work.”

“You’re not the right type for the _grunt_ work we usually get boys to do,” Gan Ning said lasciviously. “Eh Zijing?”

His second-in-command Chen Wei, style name Zijing, laughed. “Way too tall!”

The boy did flush at that. “I see. I’ll find another way.” He started to bow, but Gan Ning began laughing.

“I’m just teasing you kid!” he said. “If you wanna clean shit up and get less food than anyone else, then we leave in the morning. You don’t get bells yet though. Those are earned.”

Zhou Tai completed the bow. “I am at your service.”

———

“We got a live one!” yelled Chen Wei.

Gan Ning scrambled up from below decks and then regarded his friend with disgust. “What the hell? That’s hardly worth the time, is it?”

Chen Wei chuckled. “They’re trying to run like they think they’re worth our time. C’mon, they might even surrender without a fight.”

“Aw, but that’s no fun. Ok, give chase.”

The sailors of the small merchant vessel looked unsure, but their leader, quite obviously the merchant, was from his body language totally set against surrender. Gan Ning swung his flail a bit, feeling the excitement building. He lived for this!

Any of his men not already on deck hurried up, and they all began jumping and shouting war cries as they approached the target, the movements of their bodies turning their bells into a cacophony that nearly drowned out their voices. They had only been wearing the bells for a few months, so when he got close enough to hear that some of the sailors on the other boat were screaming, “It’s Gan Ning!” it put an extra layer of thrill into his already superheated brain.

He was going to kill them all.

Gan Ning was as usual the first onto the other boat, and the first sailor he surprised actually lowered his weapon and started to plead for mercy. He was too revved up for that—his flail connected with the man’s head and he was dead before he hit the ground.

“Oh what the fuck Xingba!” yelled Chen Wei, disgusted, but not because of the immorality. It was because killing a man attempting to surrender would ensure that all the rest of the victims fought like cornered rats.

“Hey, you give me easy pickings, I gotta keep things interesting,” Gan Ning yelled back, dispatching another one.

He was pleased to see the new kid had not attempted to hang back. One of the targets had immediately gone after Zhou Tai, understandably assuming that he would be the easiest opponent, and the boy was holding his own in the fight. He had a weird slashing style with the curved sword he kept in his belt. Well, whatever, Gan Ning wasn’t about to be distracted.

Most of the targets fell like nothing. But there was one boy on the opposing side who was fighting with a pair of butterfly swords and was more than holding his own. He looked as young as Zhou Tai, but he had actually managed to wound one of his men to the point of falling back and letting his comrade take his place. Having vanquished the others, it was about to become a three on one.

“Capture Mr. Butterfly alive!” Gan Ning shouted. “He interests me.”

His men nodded and he could see them shift tactics to disarming or subduing, rather than killing.

The merchant captain turned out to be a surprisingly good fighter too. He was fighting across the boat from Mr. Butterfly, and when he heard Gan Ning’s shout, abruptly abandoned his opponents and began charging at the boy. But he was not charging as if he wanted to rescue him.

“Pandi!” shouted the man. The boy was startled for a moment, looked at the man, then lowered his blades and closed his eyes.

The man absolutely would have run him through with his sword, but Gan Ning’s foot interrupted this, sending him to the deck only a few strides from his goal. The pirate captain quickly took a seat on the man’s back and relieved him of his sword; his men had already rushed in to disarm and hold Mr. Butterfly.

“What a moron you are!” crowed Gan Ning, gesturing for his men to tie up the captain. When they began to do so, he stood up and walked over to Mr. Butterfly. “You know, if you hadn’t said anything, I was just going to offer this fine fighter a spot in my crew. But now that I know that she’s your daughter…”

He grinned, and licked his lips. Some of his men laughed, but others looked as if they could not believe it.

“His daughter? No way,” said the man who had been wounded by her.

“His daughter for sure, Luo Gai! Who the fuck would name a son _Pandi?_ [The name means ‘hoping for a younger brother’]” He looked down with contempt at the furious man. “Couldn’t you give her a boy’s name for your little charade? Couple that with the way that you clearly intended to kill her to save her from us, and I can’t think of anything more obvious.”

“Fuck your mother’s cunt, you bastard!” shouted the man.

“Not very creative, when I’m about to fuck your daughter’s,” drawled Gan Ning, earning another round of laughter from his men. He glanced back at Miss Butterfly, as she turned out to be. She looked defeated and ashamed. There was fear there, but shame was the clearest. It actually pulled at his heart a little. She had fought well, and could have easily earned a spot in his crew on that basis if her idiot father had had a little more sense. He turned back to the merchant, who had been gagged after his outburst. “I’ll tell you what, I’m in a good mood today. A guy’s gotta settle down sometime, right? I’m twenty, time for me to get hitched. I’ll take your daughter off your hands and I’ll even give you a great bride price. Your worthless hide. I’ll take the boat and whatever’s on it as a dowry. Sound fair? I’ll release your gag so you can respond, but I warn you that this is a limited time offer.”

Chen Wei untied the gag, and the man attempted to spit in his face and said, “My daughter would rather die than be your wife, you—“

The gag was already back in his mouth. Gan Ning tutted, and turned to the more attractive sight of Miss Butterfly. “Now I don’t remember saying that if I didn’t marry her I’d _kill_ her…” he said slowly, and the men’s laughter this time pushed all other emotions but fear out of her face. She was keeping it together, but only barely. “Ah, what the hell, I guess I’m in a _really_ good mood. How about it, Miss Butterfly? I’ll make you the same offer and we’ll see if he’s right. You be my wife, and your old man will be released to shore when we find a landing spot. Or we can dump you both into the river right now. What’ll it be?”

She didn’t hesitate. “I’ll marry you.”

Her voice was attractive and dignified, and it immediately made her wounded opponent say in disgust, “Oh, what the fuck, she _is_ a woman. Now you’re all going to give me shit about this forever.”

His comrades immediately began taking him up on this, but Gan Ning, with a very different thrill in mind, cut them short. “Ok Zijing, you pick a couple of men to run this boat with you at least until we can make landing. The rest of you, I think it’s time for the wedding banquet.”

———

Zhou Tai unexpectedly proved the value of taking fishermen’s brats on board by catching a few fish, so the meal actually was a bit more festive in quality than usual.

Miss Butterfly ate, though not a great deal. Shame and fear having had their time, defeat now took the leading role, but it was a defeat that was coupled with a determination to endure. Gan Ning was not a gracious loser himself, but he could appreciate the quality in others.

He poured wine for her, but although she stiffly nodded to acknowledge it, she did not touch it.

“You should drink,” he said, as he sipped at his own wine. “It makes things go down easier.”

Her hand trembled a little, but she reached out and took the cup and drank.

Sailors didn’t stay up much after sundown, so as the light began to fade he took her hand and led her to his tiny cabin, which was little more than a bed with a tiny desk and lantern.

“It’s a good thing Zijing is on the other boat. Otherwise I’d have to fuck you with someone else in the bed.” She looked startled, and he laughed. “What is it, Miss Butterfly?”

“You said you’d make me your wife.” Her voice wanted to shake even more than it was.

“I did, that’s why I’m gonna fuck you,” he said, and his hands caressed her wrists. “If you’re offended by my language, you’re just gonna have to get used to it. When I wanna fuck my wife I’m gonna tell her so.”

She was still wary, but she seemed to calm a little at this crude reassurance that he did not intend to slit her throat or pass her off to the others once he had had his fill.

“Now, you must be uncomfortable in those clothes, so let’s get them off,” he said, already deftly doing so. He had undressed young men before, but this was a new experience, undressing a young man who had a woman’s body underneath the clothes. Her breasts had been tightly bound to make them as flat as possible. As he pulled the breast binding off, the breasts rebounded into shape. “Now that _must_ have been uncomfortable, wasn’t it?”

She was silent, so he repeated, “Wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“You can talk, you know,” he said. “I want you to talk.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Alright, well, first thing to know about getting along with me sweetheart, when I ask you a question, answer it. Also, obey instructions. Instruction number one: take off your boots.”

As she did her boots, he did his own. “Look how well we’re getting along already,” he said, grinning, and pulled off his pants, so that he was down to just his loincloth. “Now do you have a loincloth on under there or _xieyi_ , I wonder?”

It was a loincloth. “Oh, and you’ve even stuffed it, how cute!” He unwrapped her and picked up the rolled up cloth. “I’m going to keep this. This is just too cute. Was that your idea?”

“It didn’t look convincing otherwise.”

“Ha! Does mine look convincing?”

He unwrapped his own loincloth. She couldn’t help looking down, and drew her breath in sharply.

“That’s answer enough,” he said. “Now lie down.”

For a moment she didn’t move. He smiled. “I promise I’m not going to just stick it in you immediately. Just lie down. You’ll like this.”

“ _Like_ this? Are you insulting me?” She laid down, nevertheless.

“Funnily enough I wasn’t,” he said. “Second thing to learn about me, I don’t like to wait around, but third thing, I like to get it done right the first time.” He placed a hand on her pussy. Her hips bucked, but he kept his hand still like a rider calming a horse. “Don’t freak out! I can’t tell you’re not enjoying it much yet. If I were to fuck you right now, you’d bleed all over the place and tomorrow you’d barely be able to walk, let alone work.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“You need to relax and get aroused,” he said. “Hopefully the wine you had at dinner will help you with the relaxing part. Getting you aroused is my job.”

She looked confused.

“Oh, you don’t even know what aroused means huh? I’ll teach you.” He began to slightly rub his hand back and forth over her pussy, not attempting to give any particular attention to the clitoris or the entrance. “Are you feeling strange?”

“Y-yes…” she breathed.

“Arousal is like that, but a lot more,” he said. “When you’re really aroused, your cunt will get slick so that I can just slide right in.”

“Do you have to call it that,” she said, and he could see shame flooding her face.

He caressed one of her hot cheeks with his other hand. “Ok, I won’t. I’ll take care of my wife.”

Putting action to word again, he changed the motion of his hand to be more specific—his thumb found the nub of her clitoris and massaged it gently, while his middle finger rested on her entrance. Her hips bucked again for a moment. “Getting a little more intense, isn’t it?” he said huskily. “Do you feel how you’re getting wetter as I do this?”

“Yes,” she moaned, closing her eyes.

“Beautiful,” he said, and lowered his head down to kiss her lips as he continued to play. He made the first kiss very light, just enough to get her to open her eyes at him again. “I wasn’t lying when I said you’d like it, right?”

She didn’t answer. He stopped moving his hand.

“R-right,” she said. The hand began to stroke her again, and she moaned.

“Oh, you’re eager for me,” he said. “It’s so tempting to just plunge my cock into you right now, but let’s see how you do with a finger first.”

The middle finger slid in up to the second knuckle, and her hips bucked again. “I can’t wait to feel your hips shaking like that under me when I fuck you,” he said. “You’re gorgeous, Miss Butterfly.”

He gave her a second kiss, more sensual than the first, and she was responding. A girl with a passion like his… people could laugh all they wanted about him and his impulse control, but if following his impulses had brought him this, then he would continue to follow them. He slid the finger all the way in, continuing to rub her clit with his thumb. She was getting so wet… he couldn’t stand it anymore…

“I was going to try some more fingers,” he said, his own voice shaking a little now, “but you feel so amazing that I want to be inside you right now. Don’t try to get ready. If you brace, you’ll just make things tighter, and I know you’re going to be tighter than I can stand already. Try to be like water. It doesn’t hurt the water when something dives in, no matter how big or small.” He straddled her. “Ok? What are you going to be, Miss Butterfly?”

“Water,” she managed, and closed her eyes, forcing her breath slower. It was hard to hold on even a few seconds, but he counted internally to five.

“You are fantastic,” he groaned, guided his tip to her entrance, and plunged in.

Just as he had predicted, her hips attempted to buck, but with his cock sunk to the hilt inside her and his hips pinning hers down, they could barely manage to wiggle. “You’re so hot and tight I could come right now,” he moaned. “How’s the pain, Butterfly? Manageable yet?”

She only managed a pained, wordless grunt, and he kissed the side of her face.

“You can call me Husband, Butterfly. I hope you like your nickname. I’ll be damned if I’m going to call you Pandi. Fucking ridiculous name.” His speech served two purposes: to distract himself from the overwhelming desire of his cock to start pounding her, and to aid her in relaxing to the point where he could safely give into that desire.

She laughed a bit weakly. “I… I think you can start now…”

He started working his hips slowly, willing his cock to hold out so he could savour each and every little moan dropping from her dry lips, but every sound pushed him to go faster. “You love this,” he growled. “You love me fucking you, don’t you Butterfly?”

“H-husband,” she groaned, flushing.

“Tell me you love it. Tell me you love my cock in you or I’ll stop.”

“I… I can’t say…”

He stopped thrusting.

Her eyes opened and looked up into his face. He was smiling, but he also meant to establish who was in control here.

“I… I love it,” she moaned, trying to shift her hips to get him to start moving again.

He was secretly glad he’d had to stop, because he had been so close to exploding. He was going to take her with him. Still not yet thrusting, he guided her hands to her nipples. “Rub your tits while I fuck you,” he said, and started pounding her again, propping himself up on his hands so that he could watch her.

At first her fingers were tentative but that vanished as the sensations overwhelmed her mind. “Ohhhh… Husband…”

“I’ve taken your virginity and now I’m gonna make you come for me,” he told her ecstatic face, feeling his own orgasm ascending. “I’m claiming you forever, Butterfly. Whose are you?”

“Ahhhh…” she groaned, climaxing, “Yours, yours! Ahhhh!”

“I’m coming,” he said, “I’m gonna—“

He continued to thrust as his cock pumped her throbbing pussy full of his seed, then collapsed on top of her.

———

Zhou Tai had hoped that Master Chen would take him onto the other boat, but he was passed over in favour of more trusted and experienced men. He knew that pirates were ruthless and often cruel, and in a chaotic world like the present he was willing enough to be a thief or even a killer to get by, but to have to stand by silently while a young girl had her virginity taken by force just seemed like too much. He had two sisters himself.

He had gone fishing in the hope that the deed would be done below decks while he was busy above, but apparently that hadn’t happened. No, it definitely hadn’t happened, he thought as he lay perfectly still in his berth pretending to be asleep. It definitely hadn’t happened because he, and all the other men in the quarters, could hear perfectly clearly everything that was being said or groaned in the cabin. Not only that, but the lee-cloths were not enough to muffle the suppressed moans of most of his temporary comrades as they touched themselves, presumably while they visualized their captain taking his new wife. It was all so depraved, especially because Gan Ning had ordered his father-in-law placed tied up into one of the empty berths. Zhou Tai knew the man had not been pleased that his daughter had picked dishonour over death to begin with, even when it would have meant his own death as well. To a man like that, hearing her actually enjoy it…

Just when he hoped they were really finished, Gan Ning’s voice was audible again, teasing but tender. “You feel that? That’s my seed planted in you. I’m gonna do that to you every day until you start growing my child. You like that idea, Butterfly?”

“I…”

“Don’t blush so much! I won’t make you answer right now. You’re a girl from now on, Butterfly, and don’t forget it, but I still want to see you fight. You’ve got to live like a pirate until I can get you to my mother’s house. For now, let’s go to sleep.”

 _Yes, fucking finally, let’s_ , thought Zhou Tai, guiltily aware that his body, if not his mind, had liked what it was hearing. He couldn’t even shift to relieve the ache in his balls lest he betray to the others that he was lying when he said he was exhausted from his first fight.

———

The next morning, the bride was awake before the groom. She quietly redressed in her boy clothing and tied her hair into a mannish bun, although she didn’t bother to wrap the breast binding quite as tightly, nor did she bother to stuff the loincloth.

Her… cunt, as he had called it… was a bit sore, but it wasn’t anything like as bad as her father had always warned her sex would be. And he was trying to warn her off getting seduced, not getting raped, so she had thought getting raped would be even worse.

Numbly, she thought it could indeed have been worse. By the standards of pirates she knew he was being more than kind in offering her the choice between a quick, unviolated death and a somewhat honourable existence as his wife, instead of letting her be serially raped by his crew and then probably sold to a brothel. And he hadn’t been mocking her after all when he said she would like it. Her face reddened as she remembered how he had forced her to humiliate herself by admitting it.

It could have been worse, she thought again. There was every possibility, after all, that her father would have picked a husband for her who would have treated her even worse, who may have been diseased or disgusting, who wouldn’t have taken her with any consideration for her pleasure. And then all the force of the law would have been on his side. There was at least _some_ possibility of lawful escape from this union, even if it it was impossible for her to imagine a happy ending for herself if she did.

She closed her eyes for a minute. No, she couldn’t kid herself that she would ever try to get away from him, that possible escape factored in at all. The first morning after he had forced himself on her, and within ten minutes she was telling herself it could have been worse? She was a lost cause. She’d always known she wouldn’t have a happy ending; very well. It was her nature to make the best of her unhappy life. It was how she had survived so far and it was how she would continue to survive. She wouldn’t scold herself for that.

So: it could have been worse. There. That was going to be her comfort, and she wasn’t weak for seeking it. For needing it. It was true, but even if it hadn’t been true, she would have needed to make herself believe it was.

She opened her eyes and looked down at his sleeping face. Gan Ning, she’d heard the sailors screaming as the ship chased theirs down. Now, to her, Husband. And she was no longer Guo Pandi… although he had never even bothered to find out her surname. As far as he was concerned, she was Butterfly.

He said she would have to fight, and she wondered where her butterfly swords were now.

Cooking smells filtered into the cabin, and her stomach growled again. It was her hunger that had awoken her. She hadn’t been able to eat anything like a normal meal the previous night, and that after the exertion of the fight.

Should she go see about getting something to eat?

She was the captain’s wife now, right?

Gan Ning’s eyes fluttered as the door closed quietly behind her.

———

Zhou Tai saw her first. He was carrying a pot with a basket of _youtiao_ (Chinese doughnuts) on top of it from the galley to the men. “Mrs. Gan,” he said, nodding his head.

She looked reassured by his respectful address. “Where do we eat?”

“Follow me.”

All the men but the captain were up and eating on the deck as dawn was breaking. When they looked up and saw who was trailing Zhou Tai, it cannot be said that they had respectful faces.

“Well hello,” drawled Ruan Kai over his shoulder, his eyes resting on the way her breasts were straining at the chest of the shirt, which had been cut for them bound much tighter. “Did the captain send you to us?”

She stiffened, but took the empty seat next to him as if she wasn’t the slightest bit afraid. “He’s still asleep.”

No one moved to offer her anything. She took a plate herself and began placing boiled eggs, sweet potatoes and _zongzi_ onto it. Zhou Tai was at the opposite end of the table, placing down in the last empty spot the basket and pot of hot soymilk, and began filling the men’s bowls from it as greedy hands reached out to grab the fresh _youtiao._

“Hungry?” said Ruan Kai, his tone getting more openly lascivious. “We know how hard you worked last night.”

The men laughed, and her face got red, but she said nothing, merely began peeling an egg.

“But I guess it’s not work if you _love_ it…” He turned the last two words into a high-pitched moan, imitating her voice from the previous night.

She went white and froze. She must have known they knew she had been fucked, but clearly it hadn’t occurred to her that she could be overheard.

The men were laughing, but suddenly all the laughter stopped. This ought to have warned Ruan Kai, but he was focused on his prey. “I never would have expected he could turn you into an obedient little slut so quickly. When he gets tired of you, I’ll—“

They never heard what he intended to do, because Gan Ning had lifted him bodily out of his chair by the bells that he wore across his back and shoulders like a bandoleer, and was carrying him to the port side. The man was shorter than even Butterfly, and Gan Ning hardly seemed to exert any effort to dangle him over the water.

“C-captain!” gasped the man.

“Now what would have made you think you could disrespect my wife that way?” said Gan Ning, cheerfully, but all the more terrifying for that.

“Forgive me! M-mercy!”

“Now yesterday, I was in a really good mood,” said Gan Ning. He had one of his wife’s butterfly swords in his left hand, and he was admiring his face in its blade as the man dangled, too afraid to try to struggle or grab for the side of the boat. “And last night, as you overheard, I felt even better. But this morning? This morning, Ruan Kai, I’m in a bad mood.”

The butterfly sword cut the rope of the bells and the man fell screaming into the water. Like most pirates, it appeared he couldn’t swim. There was a brief frantic scraping and thumping as if the man was attempting to claw onto the side of the boat. As Gan Ning walked back to the table, the screams began to sputter and then stopped.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Gan Ning with a big grin.

“Good morning, captain,” the men replied, subdued.

“Looks like this seat is open!” he said, taking the seat next to his wife that Ruan Kai had just been sitting in, and selecting a boiled egg from the dead man’s plate with enthusiasm. “I’m starting to feel better already. It would be a shame if anything were to piss me off at this point, right guys?”

The men muttered various agreements and went back to their food.

Zhou Tai realized that he was almost as frozen as Butterfly, who was still sitting as if turned to stone, staring at her cracked egg. The cook would be wondering where the hell he was. He turned to go.

His movement must have attracted Gan Ning’s attention. “Hey, Zhou Tai,” he cried, and when the boy turned back, he was only just able to catch the broken string of bells. “Nice fighting yesterday. See if you can fix that up for yourself, huh?”

Zhou Tai did not really want to accept, but he bowed.

———

Gan Ning hadn’t been lying when he said he was in a bad mood. When he’d woken up to see his wife apparently sneaking out, he’d been beyond furious. He thought he had taught her the night before that she was his, body, mind and soul. Now here she was the very next morning attempting to do some idiotic thing like try to escape.

He’d picked up one of her butterfly swords, in fact, fully intending to slit her throat with it. If she wouldn’t be his, then she would be hell’s.

Ruan Kai’s loud taunting had of course redirected all his wrath, and seeing his wife sitting at the table, his good mood was indeed returning. She was just hungry, huh? Although she didn’t seem to be doing much about it now.

“Something wrong with that egg, Butterfly?” he said. “Try this one instead.”

She accepted Ruan Kai’s egg silently and began to eat it, her face slowly regaining its colour. How cute she was. He kissed her cheek and took a bite out of a _zongzi_.

———

They sighted a small, unoccupied dock mid-morning, and Gan Ning decided to dock long enough to say goodbye to his father-in-law. He told his crew to bring the man up and let him have the leftovers of breakfast while he leapt over to the other boat to talk to Chen Wei.

Chen Wei hailed him in a fine mood. The major cargo of the seized ship had turned out to be silk fabric and thread, a very valuable haul indeed for the small size.

“Any women’s clothing aboard for my Butterfly?” he inquired.

“Butterfly? You’re still calling her that?” Chen Wei rolled his eyes. “Yeah, there was a locked trunk in the cabin that I burst open and it had some. Nothing like silk though. What she had on yesterday was better, honestly. There seems to be a little case with personal girl stuff in it that is probably hers, in the main cabin. Should I send it over?”

“Yeah, do that. I’ll get her something made with some of this then,” he said, running his hand over a piece of red fabric. “And some nightdresses.”

“Silk for something she’s going to wear about two minutes a night?”

“Ah, but those two minutes..!”

“Pervert,” said Chen Wei. “Are we selling this boat in Shouchun?”

They discussed boats for a few minutes until they were hailed back over to the main boat. Upon having his gag removed, rather than eating, his father-in-law had immediately begun demanding to speak to his daughter, and his crew wanted to know what the captain wanted them to do.

He leapt lightly back onto the boat and said, “Go tell my wife I want her on deck immediately.” To the furious, still chained man, he said, “Good morning, Yuezhang [father-in-law]! Sleep well?”

“Fuck your mother’s stinking cunt,” the man snarled.

“Adding one word isn’t any more creative,” said Gan Ning, laughing. “You are so stubborn! This is all your fault, y’know—you tried to cheap out on people to guard that shipment and you even brought your daughter on board. A man who doesn’t guard his treasures will see them enjoyed by others. Or hear her being enjoyed, in your daughter’s case.” He grinned.

“You bastard! That little bitch isn’t a treasure!”

Unfortunately Butterfly arrived in time to hear that part. She breathed in sharply, but didn’t blush.

The sound of her inhalation drew her father’s attention, and he turned to regard her with hatred. “You worthless whore,” he spat. “I should have sold you to a brothel myself. You’ll end up there soon enough. You’re no daughter of mine. Don’t ever let me hear you claiming to be part of the Guo family.”

“Oh, you told us just in time!” said Gan Ning. “Here I was thinking she was your daughter, but if she’s not, I guess I don’t need to pay you the bride price I mentioned after all.”

He got up to retrieve his flail, but Butterfly stopped him with a strangled, “Husband… please… just let him go.”

“Sorry, Butterfly, I’m in a bad mood today, remember? You can go below if you don’t want to watch. In fact, do that. I’ll wanna be cheered up afterwards.”

“I’ll go below, but please let him go. Not for his sake—I have a brother and I don’t know what will happen to him without a father.”

She bowed and left without waiting to hear his reply.

Gan Ning looked at Chen Wei, then back at the furious, humiliated man. “Sparing you seems so pointless,” he said. “You’ve got such a death wish, you’re gonna get killed by someone else long before your little turtle egg grows up. But whatever, I don’t want to bother getting my flail and killing you when I could be fucking your daughter. So long.”

“Put him on shore and let’s head out,” he called to Chen Wei as he headed for the steps down to the cabin. “I’ll be in my cabin for a half hour or so.”

———

She was already almost undressed as he came in the room.

“You’re eager too, huh?” he said as he closed the door. “Don’t take it to heart if anyone tries calling you a slut or a whore again. You can’t be either one since I’m the only one who’s ever gonna fuck you, you know.”

Butterfly didn’t answer. She just laid down on the bed naked.

“For next time,” he said, as he untied the string of bells and loosened his belt just enough to allow him to free his stiffening cock from his loincloth, “in the pirate life you never know exactly when opportunity—or danger—is gonna strike, so when we grab a quickie like this, you shouldn’t undress all the way. We may have to go from fucking to fighting in a hurry.” He grinned, climbed over her, and aligned himself with her entrance. “Are you ready?”

She nodded, but when he slid a finger in to check, she was barely wet. “Little liar,” he said, shaking his head. “You thought I’d be angry with you if you said no? I thought I made it clear last night, I’ll take care of my wife.”

He briefly considered going down on her, but the space was too cramped for him to do that easily, unless he put his hips by her head… that thought made him grin, but it was probably too advanced for her on several levels. He wouldn’t be able to coach her on how to give head if his own mouth was busy, after all. Instead he set his hand to work again.

Butterfly bit her lip and closed her eyes. Her face, and the response of her body, showed that she was enjoying it, but she wasn’t allowing a single one of those delicious little moans out.

“You were embarrassed that everyone heard you, huh?” he said. Her cheeks reddened again. She opened her eyes and he saw the shame in her face. With a rueful smile, he kissed her. “Knowing that everyone knew I was making you come was an extra thrill to me, so I can’t really say sorry, but I hope you’ll get over your shame about it soon. Besides…” He pulled his hand away and quickly slid into her, and she gasped. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to help making noise soon.”

———

A few days later, they encountered another promising target. Gan Ning knew he didn’t have enough men to take on a third boat, so while it went against his instincts, after an initial fight where his Butterfly took her first life, he had accepted the enemy plea for them to lower their weapons, and negotiated a 70% take of their cargo.

The haul was jewelry, but not terribly valuable stuff. Everyday accessories for ladies of moderate wealth. When they got back onto the boat, Gan Ning told Butterfly to kneel. She knelt as a man would, and he clucked at her. “Your knees, Butterfly.”

She blushed and pulled her knees together tightly.

“Beautiful,” he said, and his men watched as their captain untied his wife’s bun, deftly twisted the hair, and tied it off with a ribbon. Then he wound the twisted ponytail up, holding it with one hand while he reached into his pocket and pulled out his find: a _buyao_ hair comb whose dangling ornaments were small bells. He slid it into place, then circled her to admire his work.

“Beautiful!” he repeated, and held out a hand to help her to her feet. She accepted it and stood, but kept her eyes down. “Why so bashful? You earned it. Didn’t she, gentlemen?”

She looked up as the men laughed, but they were laughing like brothers to a little sister, and she smiled a little herself.

Gan Ning swung his arm around her shoulder in a gesture that was more comradely than loverlike. “Let’s finish off the wine, everyone! We’ll be in Hefei tomorrow.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to split the text of the original chapter one into two chapters, since 10k is a bit long for a chapter. If you already read this when it was a single chapter, there are no other changes.

Zhou Tai wasn’t sure what he had expected regarding the split of the spoils of a pirate trip, but he had not expected it to be carried out so democratically, given Gan Ning’s immediate execution of Ruan Kai for insulting his wife. However, apparently that had been a personal matter. When it came to business, Gan Ning was generous, fair, and receptive to suggestions, and it was obvious his men felt well-treated.

The main question was how to handle splitting the shares when Gan Ning, and a few of the others, wished to keep some of the haul as goods for their own direct use, whereas others would have preferred that the entire haul be sold and then the money split, since it would be hard to judge the value of the individual goods. Everyone seemed to want to make it work, however, and everyone seemed to trust Gan Ning not to try to take more than was his right.

Zhou Tai and Butterfly were to be given half shares, the regular men single shares, a few senior men double shares, Chen Wei four shares, and Gan Ning four, plus the value of the seized boat. No one seemed to have an issue with Gan Ning claiming the boat, but since Gan Ning announced that he wanted to turn both boats into a single, superior boat, perhaps they all thought of it as reinvestment.

It definitely seemed like they would be in Hefei for a while though, and the boy wanted to get to Shouchun as soon as possible. He thought it might be wiser to bring this up before being given his share, as then he could offer to leave his share to remain in the good graces of Gan Ning. He was not at all a man to have as an enemy.

“Alright, I’m advancing you all some money,” said Gan Ning as they finished with the routine of docking, “so you can all go and get shitfaced and find some company or whatever. Go crazy but don’t leave the city, because as soon as we find the right boat I’m gonna want to go. Stay at the usual place.”

He had an arm around his wife, and as Zhou Tai tried to think of how to bring up his desire to defect, the captain surprised him by slinging his other arm around the boy.

“Hey, Zhou Tai, where are your bells? Wouldn’t they fit around your ridiculous shoulders? I’ll get ‘em fixed up for you, otherwise nobody will know you’re with us. Your first time in the big city, huh? Ordinarily I’d be the one to show you a good time, but maybe you can keep Zijing company instead, since I’m gonna be busy.”

“Where should I take him?” said Chen Wei, speculatively. “Is he a virgin?”

“Why are you asking me? You said yourself he’s too tall,” laughed Gan Ning.

“Pervert! I mean with a woman.”

Butterfly’s eyes widened, but neither her husband nor his friend seemed to notice.

“Well, how should I know that either? Zhou Tai, what about it?”

Zhou Tai blushed. “I…”

“He is,” said Gan Ning.

Chen Wei nodded. “Brothel first, teahouse after then. Nothing worse than a first time you can’t remember. Shouldn’t take him long, also.”

“Sounds great! Have a good time!”

“But captain—”

“Tell Chen Wei about it, I’ll see you tonight probably. I have pleasure first in mind today as well.” He unwrapped the arm around Zhou Tai and surprised his wife by picking her up and jumping onto the dock, rather than using the gangway.

———

Butterfly sat in a chair with her back to the wall and her eyes fixed to the door, a sword in each hand.

Her husband had assured her that she would be perfectly fine waiting for him in the room of the inn while he arranged to turn some of his share of the silks into clothing for her, but the obvious roughness of the place and the predatory glances of those lingering around it made it impossible for her to relax, much less take the nap he suggested.

When the door unlocked and opened, she leapt up into a defensive stance, and her husband laughed at her.

“Did you spend the whole time I was gone in fear for your life?” he said. “Butterfly, don’t you trust me? They know me around here; they wouldn’t dare touch something that belongs to me.”

She lowered the weapons and placed them on the table, unsure of how to answer, but Gan Ning apparently didn’t care. “Let’s hope the measurements you gave me were accurate,” he said. “They said they could rush and have some ready for tomorrow. In the meantime, this is all you need to wear around me.”

He held out a package, and she unwrapped it and removed a brilliant red silk robe, embroidered with golden fish swimming in pairs, and a matching _xieyi_.

She looked at him and he was already undressing. “Well? Don’t you like it? Let me see you in it.”

“I like it, but I don’t want to get blood on it,” she said, cautiously.

He was already down to his loincloth but he stopped at that. “Blood? Ah, hell, seriously? I finally get to fuck you on a real bed and you’re bleeding. Of all the… how long do you bleed, usually?”

“Four or five days.”

“Ugh, really?” He signed and unwound his loincloth. “Do you need… supplies, or something?”

“I have hemp pads already,” she said, wondering why he wasn’t redressing. Why he was still aroused.

He sat down on the bed, and set his loincloth next to him. “Good. Come here.”

She walked over and stood by the bed, confused, and he smiled. “Little innocent! You have no idea what I want you to do, do you? Take your top off and I’ll explain.”

She removed her shirt and unhooked her breast binding, and he reached up to caress a breast, while his other hand slid to his cock and grasped it loosely.

“Before I fucked you, I promised you that you would like it,” he said. “I can’t promise you’ll like this, but it’s something I’ll expect you to do for me regardless. When I can’t fuck your pussy, I want to cum from your hands and your mouth.”

“My _mouth_?” She was horrified, and his grin did not lessen it. “You want me to… to put my mouth on…”

“On my cock, yeah,” he said. “Would it disgust you less if I cleaned up a little first? I don’t mind doing that.”

She couldn’t answer, and he got up and calmly went to the washing basin and pitcher, wet a cloth, and did a brief but efficient and thorough job. He walked back to the bed and sat down again.

“Let’s take it slow,” he said. “Watch me.” He grasped his cock loosely again. “See how I have my hand covering it as widely as possible, and my thumb laying over the shaft? Now I stroke.” His hand tightened and she watched, fascinated, as the skin seemed to slide, as if less attached to what was beneath than the skin on an arm or a leg was. “Nice long strokes. Not too fast.” He released it. “You try, Butterfly.”

Awkwardly, she knelt so that her legs were straddling the side of his hips, her head on his shoulder, and reached into his lap to try to imitate his grip. Her hand was smaller, so she couldn’t cover as much of him, but he gave a little pleasured sigh as she grasped him and began to attempt to slide as he had.

“Too gentle,” he said thickly. “Hold it a little tighter.”

She tried.

“Tighter.”

She tried again.

“Just like that,” he moaned, and closed his eyes. “My sweet little Butterfly… learning how to pleasure my cock just right… my treasure…”

Her face was red as her hand moved on him. Never in her life had she felt herself to have value to anyone. Now she was someone’s treasure, but this was far from a girlish daydream of romance. What had happened to her? Why had fate tied her by the red string to this man, whose kindnesses were strange and whose brutalities were open?

He twisted suddenly and kissed her, forcing his tongue in her mouth as her hand let him go in surprise. His eyes were staring directly into hers, and their fire made her stomach do a flip. Just as suddenly, he released the kiss, and grabbed a pillow and dropped it on the floor. “Kneel on that.”

She obeyed, and found herself facing his cock as he widened his legs.

“You did so well,” he said huskily. “You can do this too. I’ll teach you and we’ll go slow. Ok?”

“Ok,” she whispered.

“You look so beautiful kneeling before me,” he said. “Does my cock do a good job fucking you, Butterfly?”

“Yes,” she whispered, and before he could goad it out of her, added, “I love being fucked by you, Husband.”

———

Gan Ning groaned and clutched at the edge of the bed, not sure whether he wanted to start stroking his own cock, force it down her throat, or rip her clothes off and start fucking her, blood be damned. _She loves it, she loves it!_ “Ohhhh, Butterfly, you better be careful,” he said. “You get me too fired up that way…”

She blushed gorgeously and turned her face away. “I’m sorry… I thought you would want me to say it…”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said quickly. “Believe me, I like to hear that. Fuck, I’m hard as a rock now.” He took a deep breath and let it out raggedly. “Ok. Since my cock does such good work for you, you can show him a little appreciation. Kiss my cock, Butterfly.” She didn’t move, and he said sweetly, “Just briefly.”

She leaned forward and dropped the lightest and quickest of closed mouthed kisses on his tip, then drew back.

“Was that alright? I don’t mean did you enjoy it, but could you tolerate it?”

“It wasn’t that bad,” she said quietly.

“Kiss it again.”

She leaned in again and kissed it, and without being told to, she lingered and dropped a second kiss down the shaft.

“Keep going,” he said, before she could pull away again, and she continued. He let her take a few minutes just getting used to having his cock in such close proximity to her face.

Suddenly he remembered his own introduction to oral sex, on the giving side—the captain of the crew he wanted to join jeering him, asking him to “show what he was good for.” Unlike Butterfly, though, he had known exactly what was expected of him, and he hadn’t minded the actual sucking of the cock; it was being on his knees and the humiliation of being watched and kibitzed by his soon to be crewmates that was difficult. And having his head caught and held so that he was forced to swallow, the way that the gagging had made his eyes water in a way that they all mocked as crying… that was horrible. But they had let him join.

“Are your knees alright, Butterfly?” he said, jerking himself out of this unpleasant memory and focusing on the beautiful face by his crotch. “I can lie back on the bed instead if you want. Might be easier on you?”

“I’m alright,” she said.

“Getting used to it? Not so bad?”

She dropped another kiss. “Not so bad.”

“Try licking it.”

He could see her hesitation. “The taste isn’t bad at this point, I promise,” he said. “Especially since it’s clean. It tastes like skin with a little bit of mustiness, kind of like sweat.”

“At this point?”

He laughed guiltily. “Well, you got me Butterfly. I’d like you to _try_ my cum when it comes out, but I definitely won’t cum in your mouth unless I know you like it. I’ll tell you in time to pull your mouth away. Some people actually like the stuff, not that I can understand that. If you like it, I’ll be fucking thrilled.”

She looked up at him with a strange expression, but didn’t say anything. She looked back down at his cock and quickly licked the side.

“Excellent,” he sighed. “Try licking from the base to the tip, slowly.” As she obeyed, he continued his instructions. “Swirl your tongue around the head now.”

She said hesitantly, “There’s something coming out…”

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “It’s like eyes watering, ok? Just a little salty.”

Butterfly ran her tongue around the head and he sighed with pleasure. “You trust me… you are beautiful, Butterfly… now, keep licking as I explain… ah… what I do to your cunt, and what you did with your hand, you’re going to try to mimic that motion with your mouth now, ok? Taking my cock into your mouth and moving up and down. Start by just taking in the tip, and then take more and more.”

He groaned as she began to get into a rhythm, but she was going so slow… she was gradually taking more and more in, but so incrementally that each increase was almost imperceptible… if she had been experienced, he would have accused her of purposefully being a tease. But she was innocent and that made it even hotter. She didn’t even know how crazy she was making him. When he came it was going to be an explosion.

“You can… run your tongue along me as you go,” he gasped. “Oh, _fuck,_ Butterfly…”

She had apparently gotten used enough to him that she had suddenly gone from taking about half of him to taking the whole thing.

“Fuck, do that again, _fuck,”_ he groaned. The sound of the bells from her hair comb as her head bobbed on his crotch seemed to echo the stars bursting within his brain. He stopped trying to focus on instructing her what to do and simply enjoyed the sensation of fucking her mouth and throat.

The extended foreplay and the turn-on of knowing that he was the first and only man she would ever do this for soon had him at the edge. “I’m going to cum soon, Butterfly,” he groaned to warn her, but she kept going. “Butterfly, I’m going to cum in your mouth if you don’t… ah…”

He couldn’t hold back, and he watched as she managed to swallow the first burst, but then began to gag. Her mouth slipped off and he was spraying her face. Quickly he grabbed the loincloth and covered himself, stroking out the last of his orgasm with his own hand, as she turned away, coughing. “Oh, Butterfly, that was so hot, but I told you you didn’t have to do that,” he said. “Are you alright? Why did you try to swallow it?”

She lifted a hand to her cum-splattered face, not meeting his eyes, and he saw the same shame as when she had initially been defeated and disarmed. “I didn’t want it on my face,” she whispered.

“I think it looks sexy as hell,” he said, and was heartened to see that she actually cracked a smile at that. “My lovely Butterfly, let me clean you up.”

———

He was gentle and tender as he washed her face. She still found it difficult to meet his eyes, but now it was because the admiration in them was hard to bear. When she looked in his eyes, she could easily let herself be fooled into thinking he actually loved her, and she couldn’t let herself be so weak as to believe that.

“How was the taste?” he said, and she looked at the devilish smirk on his lips.

“Not bad but also not good,” she said honestly. “Like some kind of weird fish with sugar on it.”

He laughed. “Sounds absolutely disgusting. What do you want to have for dinner? I’ll get you whatever you want. You deserve to eat something nice.”

She frowned, thinking again about all the little offhand remarks and things that didn’t seem to make sense, unless… “Husband, can I ask you something?”

“Now’s a good time to get a favour,” he said. “Very shrewd, I like it. Go ahead.”

“It’s not a favour,” she said hesitantly. “I’m just confused… maybe I’m understanding wrong… I don’t want you to be offended…”

“Ok, I won’t be offended. I’ll just call you stupid instead.”

“Do you… did you… have you…” She couldn’t think of how to put it. “Have you done what I did for you just now?” She finally blurted.

There was silence, and she hardly dared to look at his face, but the mouth was smiling, and her gaze drifted up to see that it was a smile that wasn’t fake. “Busted,” he said. “Yes, I have. It’s not exactly a secret, either. In case it ever comes up, I’ve fucked and been fucked in the ass, as well, but it’s not my preference.”

“In the…” She stared at him.

“Don’t worry about it, just know that jokes about it might come up,” he said with a shrug. “I’m not interested in doing it with you, unless you decide for yourself you want to try it. Personally I think it’s a hassle to set up and the mess after is the worst. Just not my thing.”

Not his thing… she hesitated again, but he seemed so calm about it that she decided to risk asking. “But… you don’t dislike… what I did?”

“No, I don’t dislike it. What a way to put it,” he laughed. “Does that bother you?”

“Not just receiving it, but performing it?” she pursued.

“My god, you want it clear. Do you want me to draw you a diagram?” He was still amused, and he began making sweeping gestures with his hand, as if painting her a picture with a brush. “Ok, this is me the night before we overtook your ship, having my dick sucked, and over here is me returning the favour afterwards. With Zijing. In our cabin. The same one I took your virginity in the next night.” He paused, but she didn’t have anything else to say. “So, rice? Noodles? Soup?”

“Fried rice,” she said. “Uh… with pork.”

“You got it,” he said, and kissed her forehead before leaving.

———

Gan Ning wasn’t expecting to run into his first mate and his cabin boy at his favourite restaurant. He knew where the best red light district was, and it wasn’t around here. Nor did Chen Wei’s flushed discomfort escape him. “What’s up? Whores closed today?”

“Captain,” said Zhou Tai firmly, “I wish to be direct. I want to continue north to join Jiang Qin’s forces; that has always been my intention. I thank you for allowing me to serve you on this voyage, and I am willing to leave my half-share behind, as payment for my passage.”

Gan Ning glanced at Chen Wei, who wasn’t meeting his eyes. “Jiang Qin, huh? You know he’s trying to go big-time, right? He may not want a kid like you.”

“I know.”

Gan Ning shrugged. “Alright, it’s your life kid. No hard feelings on my end. Come back with me to the inn and I’ll pay out your half-share to you. You paid for your passage doing grunt work; the half-share is for your fighting, and you earned it.”

Zhou Tai bowed, and waited as Gan Ning ordered, paid for, and received some take out fried rice and other dishes, and they all walked back to the inn, Chen Wei trailing behind.

“Butterfly, are you decent? We have guests.”

“Yes, come in.”

He plopped the food down on the table and kissed her cheek. “Go ahead and eat; this is business and it won’t take long.”

She hesitated, but he knew the food smelled amazing and within moments she was digging in. Meanwhile, Gan Ning pulled open his wife’s bag and got out some money and counted it.

“This should do,” he said. “Fair amount, Zhou Tai?”

Zhou Tai put it away without counting it. “I know it is fair.”

“I’ve already paid for a bed for you tonight, so you might as well use it, if you’re staying in Hefei. But otherwise from now on we have nothing to do with each other. Safe journey and if Jiang Qin tells you to fuck off, feel free to try to track me down. Half-share to start.”

Zhou Tai bowed, and Gan Ning nodded, and the boy departed. He turned to Chen Wei. “What’s the deal, Zijing?”

“Can we go to my room to talk about it?” said Chen Wei, glancing at his wife.

“I’ll see you later, Butterfly,” he said. “Remember what I said about you being safe as long as you stay in the room.”

In Chen Wei’s room, the man sighed and sat on the single bed. “I fucked up, Xingba. Sorry.”

“What’s the matter?”

“He told me that he didn’t want to go to a brothel, so I thought… well…”

Gan Ning started to crack up. “What happened to ‘too tall’?”

Chen Wei gave him a dirty look. “You’re the one who only likes them pretty, Xingba. Anyway, you’re gonna be busy, so I thought, what the hell, right? It’d be nice to have someone on the boat to get off with. So I bought a bottle of wine and brought him here… he accepted the wine, but not my advances. I tried to tell him that he could still be on the crew without fucking, but he wouldn’t hear it. I think I scared him off, and for that I’m sorry. He was a great fighter and he’s only gonna get better.”

“Don’t sweat it, Zijing. He made it pretty clear right from the beginning that he saw us only as transportation, remember? He doesn’t have a pirate heart. Better for him to get out now while he’s still unmarked.”

Chen Wei laughed. “He won’t stay unmarked if Jiang Qin takes him on.”

“Eh, you may be surprised,” said Gan Ning, and he scratched absently at one of his rib tattoos, as if it were still fresh. “From what I hear, Jiang Qin is looking to go straight and link up with Yuan Shu.”

“Yuan Shu counts as going straight?”

Gan Ning had to laugh at that. “Well. Straight-ish. Straighter than being a pirate, at least. Fifty percent of the world thinks you’re scum, instead of one hundred percent.”

Chen Wei shook his head. “Yuan Shu is an idiot. He won’t end well. If I was going to try to go straight, it wouldn’t be for somebody like him.”

“Yeah, well, beggars can’t be choosers, right?” said Gan Ning. “It’s not every lord that’d take somebody who looks like us, even if we can fight better than anyone.”

“Good thing we don’t care about moving up in the world,” said Chen Wei with a grin.

“Yeah. Good thing.”

———

Gan Ning never had trouble sleeping. He wasn’t having trouble sleeping now, he told himself; he simply needed to think.

_Good thing we don’t care about moving up in the world._

Gan Ning had agreed aloud, but he was no longer sure that was true. Butterfly was asleep in his arms, his tattooed arms. Her figure was so slight, but he yearned to make her body swell with his child. And that meant he had to think about more than just himself, for once. At some level, he already knew this. “I’ll take care of my wife,” he kept telling her, and that had to mean more than just making her orgasm. While he was confident enough in his abilities that the possibility of being caught and executed for piracy didn’t occur to him even in the dark silence of his bed, the fact remained that it was not a respectable life, and it was only really possible to succeed in it so long as the land remained in turmoil. And that turmoil would always mean a certain instability in what he could do with the proceeds.

He considered the area warlords, but he could not think of any that would accept him even as a regular soldier, much less give him opportunity for advancement. He would have to wait and see how Jiang Qin did under Yuan Shu. If he did well, maybe there would be opportunity there… or maybe other warlords would see the merit of looking past a little evidence of small scale freelance murder and theft if it got them assistance in their warfare, which was just large scale, societally sanctioned murder and theft. That thought made him grin a little in the darkness. No, he didn’t think badly of anything he had done. Maybe someday he would meet a lord that would understand that.

Just need to wait for the opportunity…

He envisioned himself a highly honoured general in some army, returning to his fief with the spoils of yet another victorious battle, his children clamouring for his attention, servants bowing, his mother relaxed and quiet and not having to lift a finger… then going up to his bedroom and taking his wife from behind, planting yet another child within her as Butterfly moaned, “My lord!”

His cock stirred, and he almost laughed at himself. A few days more, and he’d get right to work on planting the first one.


	3. Chapter 3

Eyes widened and soldiers got out of the way as Gan Ning walked through the streets.

“It’s Gan Ning.”

“Should we arrest him?!”

“Arrest him?!? You try it, if you think you can…”

The guards at the officer’s door, who didn’t have the option of refusing to engage, gulped and raised their spears.

Gan Ning raised his hands. “I’m just here to talk to Su Fei. He in?”

“What do you want with the general, pirate?” The boldness of the guard’s words was somewhat undermined by how his spear was trembling.

“It’s what he’s gonna want with me. And that’s between me and him. So is he in? I’ll come back if he’s not.”

“You’re a criminal!”

He laughed. “So’s your fucking lord, if you asked Yuan Shu about it. And maybe for right now Huang Zu’s in good with Liu Biao and Liu Biao’s in good with the emperor up north, but that all depends on who’s holding _those_ strings.”

“Let him in,” came a voice from inside.

The guards parted and Gan Ning swanned inside.

Su Fei didn’t stand up or bow, but he did nod in response to Gan Ning’s deep bow, which was honestly more than he had hoped for. “What do you want?”

Gan Ning had known how to deal with the common soldiers, but all of his previous dealings with officials had involved being in chains, which somewhat shook even his confidence. “I heard you’re recruiting, my lord. If your lord wants men who know how to fight and how to lead fighters, you can’t get better than me.”

“Every lord needs such men,” Su Fei said, “but talent in war isn’t the only measure of an officer. Lü Bu’s talent could not save him from the consequences of being untrustworthy and ungrateful.”

“But only after he’d gotten half a dozen second chances,” Gan Ning countered. “You only gotta give me the one chance, my lord.”

Su Fei chuckled. “Hm! Well-answered. But naval battles aren’t like pirate raids.”

“That’s why I’ll rely on your orders, my lord.”

“Well-answered again.” Su Fei leaned back in his chair. “You’re not what I expected from your reputation. Everyone says you’re impulsive and bloodthirsty. Is that wrong?”

“Uh…” Gan Ning scratched at the tattoo on his neck. “Well…”

“You’ll have the opportunity to indulge the bloodthirst in battle. If you limit it to there, there won’t be a problem. But impulsivity is a major fault. You will need to demonstrate that you can control yourself.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Taking risks is also a mark of a good officer. I’ll be taking a risk on you. I’ll speak to Lord Huang Zu on your behalf to make you one of my subofficers.”

Gan Ning’s chest swelled with triumph. He’d done it! “You won’t regret it, my lord.”

———

Butterfly set the newly mended cloth on the top of the pile and took a moment to close her eyes and rub at her lower back.

She’d heard bells, but on Gan Ning’s boat that was a nearly constant noise, so she was startled when a pair of strong hands gripped her hips and began working the same spot, only much better than she could have done from the awkward angle. “Ah…” she moaned.

“Back bothering you again, Butterfly?” her husband said, and dropped a kiss on the back of her neck. “How’s this?”

“Much better, thank you husband,” she said.

He eased off on her back and slid his hands around to her front, pulling her snug against him while he caressed her swollen belly. She could feel how hard he was. “My wife,” he growled.

_My property_ , Butterfly thought to herself, but at the same time she knew herself to be his most jealously guarded possession.

The crew laughed and whistled affectionately as their captain grabbed his wife by the hand and yanked her below decks. Though his shameless behaviour was routine to her by now, she still blushed.

“You’re so beautiful, I can’t take it,” he said savagely as he thrust her into their tiny cabin and slammed the door behind him. He threw a cushion on the floor and she got to her knees without needing to be told as he undid his belt and freed his erection. “I’ve been dreaming about fucking your throat all day.”

Despite the aggression of his words, his touch was gentle, and he let her set the pace.

“You just love sucking this cock, don’t you Butterfly? You want it so bad. You want to drink every drop of me. My naughty little wife. Yeah, suck it just like that. Oh, oh, fuck. Here it comes.”

He always warned her, but she’d come to tolerate swallowing. The taste was worth the pleasure it clearly gave him. She could see it in his eyes.

“My wife,” he said hoarsely, caressing her hair as she let his softening cock slide from her lips. “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie.

He helped her stand back up. “Things went well. Su Fei agreed to give me a chance. I’m going straight. Only bad thing about it, no way can I get away with having a woman in my crew under Huang Zu. I’ve been putting it off, but you would have had to go be with my mother eventually. Your belly’s getting so big from my child… I’ve been selfish, yeah?”

She bit her lip, and he laughed.

“You don’t have to answer that. Su Fei told me I need to stop being so impulsive… you bring out the worst in me, Butterfly…” He rubbed at her belly again. “And the best. Man, I can’t believe I’ve been able to restrain myself from fucking your cunt these past few weeks. Do you know how badly I want to give you a goodbye fuck? Shit, that proves it. I _must_ be getting better at controlling my impulses.”

———

“I’m home,” Gan Ning yelled, yanking open the door even though it was nearly midnight. “Everybody wake up!”

He lit a lamp as noises announced that the household was doing just that. Butterfly sidled in, carrying her bag, very nervous and shy.

The manservant, with his wife behind him, came in, dressing gowns thrown on in a rush and sleepy-faced. “Welcome home, master. Are you hungry?”

“Nah, you can go back to sleep. I’ll want breakfast at first light because I gotta leave early, though.” He raised his voice again. “Mama! Come on, wake up. Oh, there you are.”

A very short woman whose weathered skin and hands proclaimed a hard life only recently softened had come in. “Why did you come in so late? So rude to your mother.”

“Sorry,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Big news, Mama. Things have been going great, but they’re going to be even better. I’m gonna be an officer for Huang Zu.”

She didn’t look overly thrilled. “Isn’t it dangerous? Maybe you should stick to what you know.”

“Aw, Mama, you know the pirate life can’t keep going forever. And besides, that’s the other thing… c’mere Butterfly…” His wife bowed as deeply as she could with her pregnant belly. “Got myself a wife! Her name’s… hey, Butterfly, what’s your actual name? Pandi I remember, but what was the other part?”

“Guo,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter anyway. So I’ll be leaving her here with you, Mama.”

“You got married,” his mother said, staring at Butterfly, “not only without consulting me, but without even letting me know? If you wanted a wife, I could have easily have gotten one for you. I’m the one who has to live with her, after all.”

“Grumpy Mama,” Gan Ning laughed, and kissed the top of her head again. “You’ll get along fine, Mama, she’s great. And hey, you’re going to get that grandchild you’ve been longing for in a few months. But I gotta get some sleep because I really do have to leave first thing. I brought money and stuff, and I’ll send more. Night, Mama!”

He pulled his wife along the familiar route to his room.

———

Gan Ning wasted three years of his life under Huang Zu. It wasn’t that Gan Ning didn’t succeed. He succeeded plenty, he just never got rewarded or recognized for his results.

Huang Zu had hated him at first sight.

He didn’t get along with the other officers, probably because they were all taking their cues from Huang Zu. The one exception was Su Fei, whose initial cautiousness blossomed into almost a kind of mentorship. At his advice, Gan Ning improved his reading and writing and studied like he never had as a child.

It didn’t make any difference.

The few bright spots were the all too brief periods when he had leave to visit his family. His first being when his wife had given birth.

“It’s only a girl,” his mother said.

“Well hello to you too Mama,” Gan Ning said, laughing. “C’mon, you’re happy, don’t lie to me.”

His mother smiled reluctantly. “She is very cute. Reminds me of when you were a baby.”

She _was_ really cute. Gan Ning cooed at her and let her wrap her tiny hand around his finger.

Butterfly was still sitting the month, so he couldn’t fuck her yet, but her mouth was as talented as ever.

“Husband…” she said after servicing him. “I think… your mother hates me.”

Gan Ning, satisfied and wanting only to go to sleep, chuckled indulgently. “Don’t all mothers hate their daughter-in-laws? She’ll warm up to you now that you’ve given her a grandchild.”

He pulled her carelessly into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

She didn’t bring the topic up again until the visit, over a year later, when she revealed that she was pregnant again.

“Husband…” she said when he was in the height of his elation, “what can I do to… to make your mother not dislike me quite so much?”

“Aw, you two still having quarrels? Now come on, Butterfly, I’m sure you can work it out.”

“It was bearable before but lately… I’ve been sick a lot and she’s been very angry with me about laziness…”

_Lazy_ was a word that Gan Ning knew couldn’t possibly apply to Butterfly. He sighed at that. “Man, this is probably my fault for not getting you guys enough servants. I tell you what, I’ll make sure to hire some more. Neither of you should need to lift a finger. Then she can’t be mad, alright?” He rubbed at her belly, eager to return to the topic. “What do you think, a boy this time?”

———

“Oh yeah… suck it just like that Butterfly…” whispered Gan Ning, eyes closed and chin tilted back.

Chen Wei immediately pulled his head away. “Look, you know I like doing this,” he whispered, “especially since you actually returned the favour in advance for once, and I know you miss your wife, but I will _not_ let you call me Butterfly and I told you that.”

Gan Ning shifted his hips unhappily. “Ah, c’mon, Zijing, please…”

“Absolutely not. Not even for you.”

“Fuck, fine, just suck it again alright.” After a moment he added, “Please.”

“You really say the sweetest things,” whispered his friend sarcastically, but he returned to his task.

Gan Ning bit the back of his wrist to keep from crying out and closed his eyes. _Butterfly… Butterfly… I wish I could be in your cunt right now Butterfly…_

His friend pulled his mouth off abruptly and slapped the loincloth over the spurting cock, spitting the small amount of semen that had gotten into his mouth out with disgust. “Oh what the actual fuck Xingba, you didn’t warn me? You motherfucker.”

“Shhh,” hissed Gan Ning. They were the only ones in the tent, but there were still people walking around. They could easily be overheard, and soldiers, used to a constant supply of camp followers, did not seem to understand why a sailor would ever turn to a comrade when a cunt was available for a few coins.

Chen Wei grabbed a bottle of wine and chugged it directly from the bottle. “You really are a motherfucker, you know?” he whispered, and spit again, as if he could still taste it.

“Yeah, I am,” Gan Ning admitted, grinning. “Sorry about that. I was biting my arm to keep from calling you that name and it came out of nowhere.”

“‘Nowhere’ is a good name for it,” grumbled Chen Wei. “Fucking disgusting. If you ever bring up that I’ve had your cum in my mouth, I will kill you.”

“No, it was my fault. It won’t happen again.”

“Yeah because I’m never doing it for you again.” He came back to the camp bed and settled in it with his back to Gan Ning, huffily.

Gan Ning wiped up the last of the semen and tossed the loincloth into the corner, then laid down and attempted to put an arm around Chen Wei. It was pushed off. “Forgive me, Zijing?” he said in his most charming voice, and kissed the back of his neck.

Chen Wei let him put his arm around him. “Go to sleep, pervert.”

———

The battle the next day was a shitshow from start to finish.

The enemy vanguard was a tiny force, absolutely nothing to compare to their thousands of men, but Huang Zu, screaming like a little girl, had actually abandoned his flagship and fled via a tiny boat at the sight of one dinky little enemy colonel charging at him. It didn’t matter how Gan Ning screamed at them; the soldiers, and even his fellow officers, had gone into a panic and began to retreat in total disorder.

He grabbed his bow and got off a lucky one that hit the enemy colonel in the neck. Choking on his own blood, the man fell off his horse and to the ground.

“Ha!” Gan Ning had crowed, sure that this would turn the tide and get everyone to realize how badly the enemy was outnumbered, but it was like nobody on his side even noticed! They were all in full retreat, and Chen Wei grabbed his arm and said, “C’mon, let’s fucking go!”

A soldier on the enemy side sure noticed, though. Screaming “Father! _Father!_ ,” the youth fell to his knees besides the corpse of his father, then looked up and directly at Gan Ning. The former pirate grinned and waved.

“Xingba, you motherfucker, let’s _go!”_ Chen Wei actually started dragging him away to the horses. It went against everything in him to turn and run when an enemy was running after him screaming for a fight, but there was nothing to be done.

———

The teenager ran as fast as he could, but the boats were too far from shore by the time he got there. Tears were blurring his vision as he watched his father’s murderer sail away. The bastard wasn’t even looking back at him.

It didn’t matter. Ling Tong was memorizing every detail. Tattoos and bells… he would find out who he was, and nothing would stop him from killing him.

———

The shitshow didn’t end in the rout. Huang Zu, rather than promote or at least credit Gan Ning with killing the colonel who had caused him to run for his miserable life, had decided that the pirate was the ideal scapegoat. He even attempted to lure Gan Ning’s men away from him, offering them places in his own unit.

He met with Su Fei secretly again. The poor man looked about as well as one would expect someone to look who knows full well that he is in thrall to an idiot.

“I’m sorry,” the man opened with. “I’ve tried over and over again to get Lord Huang Zu to see your talents, but… he can’t see anything but your tattoos. You will never amount to anything here.”

Gan Ning hated being on his knees, even to a man he felt sincere gratitude and affection to like this. “So what do I do?”

Su Fei frowned. He got up, checked the windows, then crept to the door and threw it open. No one was there. He closed it softly and returned to his desk, then said, “You should leave.”

“He won’t let me leave.”

“I know, that’s why you’ll have to defect to someone who will want your skills and information enough to take you with nothing.”

_The Sun clan._ “Will _he_ take a pirate?”

“His general Jiang Qin is a former pirate, and so is Sun Quan’s bodyguard Zhou Tai.”

“Zhou Tai? No fucking way!” said Gan Ning, his surprise forcing him into crudity. He flushed. “Sorry. It’s just that I know that kid!”

Su Fei smiled. “I think they do better with crude over there, from what I hear,” he said dryly.

“But… you’re asking me to defect… I don’t understand…”

“Unfortunately, I can’t leave Lord Huang Zu. Just… if it is relevant in the future… remember this day.”

Gan Ning kowtowed.

———

As opposed to the shitshow under Huang Zu, getting in good with Wu turned out to be almost too easy.

He met with a rising officer named Lu Meng first, who seemed immediately impressed with him. From Lu Meng, he was introduced to Zhou Yu, an exceptionally beautiful man who was also regarded as one of the best strategists alive. Zhou Yu questioned him thoroughly, but then introduced him the very same day to his sworn brother, the leader of them all, Sun Ce himself, and his lord’s younger brother, the gangly teenage Sun Quan.

The young lord surprised him. He wasn’t all that tall, but he was powerfully built and had a charisma to him. His face was always smiling. Unlike the lofty Huang Zu, Sun Ce was down-to-earth and casual. He exclaimed with pleasure at being presented to Gan Ning, praising his performance in previous encounters where they had met as enemies. He laughed while telling him how the name of Gan Ning sent tremors up and down his ranks.

“I told my baby bro, ‘if you ever hear bells, just beat it, run, no matter what,’” he said. Sun Quan, standing nearby, flushed with embarrassment. “You were wasted with Huang Zu! You should have joined us from the beginning. Ah well, not too late to help us kick some ass! Got any ideas?”

Gan Ning tried to sound as formal as possible as he gave his best advice on the situation as he saw it.

Sun Ce laughed again. “So what you’re saying is, attack the old geezer right now because he panics?”

“You needn’t attempt to hide yourself around Lord Sun Ce,” Zhou Yu said dryly. “I’m the only actually refined person around here.”

“Ha! I’m as high born as you—and I happen to know you’re not always so refined—” Sun Ce ruffled at Zhou Yu’s impeccable hair, making him exclaim, and the two fell into a familiar tussle that had Gan Ning laughing too as the sworn brothers knocked over tables and chairs and finally ended with Sun Ce, panting, holding Zhou Yu in a headlock.

“So what do you say, are you in?” Sun Ce said when he had enough breath back.

“Never wanted to join something more in my life.”

———

“There’s just one thing I gotta do first, my lord,” he blurted to Zhou Yu when the Wu strategist escorted him out. "I gotta get my family out of Huang Zu’s territory before he figures out I’ve defected.”

“You didn’t bring them with you?”

“Well I didn’t know if you’d accept me or not.” He paused. “My lord. Sorry.”

Zhou Yu waved it away. “How many in your family?”

“Just my mother, wife, and daughter, my lord.”

“I’ll provide a carriage. Abandon your possessions. We can take care of them very well here. Go.”

———

He left his horse and the carriage in the charge of Chen Wei. His mother was sitting on the porch, nonchalantly sewing, while his daughter was dragging a stick around in the dirt. The child glanced up at him but without any particular recognition. Six months was a long time for a toddler.

“A-Ning, so you heard,” his mother said, without getting up or even looking up more than briefly. “There was no need for you to come back.”

“Mama, we’re leaving Jiangxia right now. Don’t bother packing, just put Xiao Wan in clean clothes and get into the carriage. Where’s my wife?”

She looked up. “Leaving Jiangxia? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing wrong as long as we get out now. Just trust me Mama, there’s no time. Where’s my wife?”

“So you didn’t know. Your son came out already dead,” she said, flatly. “Two days ago.”

His blood went cold. “Is she alright?”

She looked contemptuous. “It’s like she thinks she’s the first woman in the world to lose a child. I’ve lost five, so I know better than her! I had to slap her to get her to stop crying, but she _never_ listens to me, as I’ve told you…”

She trailed off. He guessed his disgust was showing on his face. Without wanting to speak or hear another word, he went inside and ran to her room.

Butterfly was propped up in bed, being fed trotter soup by a servant. She looked as white as the sheets, and her eyes were not right as they drifted over to him.

That she was suffering emotionally from the stillbirth he had expected from his mother’s words, but he had not expected her to look nearly a corpse like this.

“Leave, I’ll do this,” he told the servant brusquely, and she vanished without a demur.

“Husband,” she said weakly, tears building up in her eyes, “I’m so sorry.”

“Butterfly, don’t. Don’t worry about it at all. I’ll give you more sons when you’re well, I promise. I’m here now. Please eat quickly because we need to leave.”

“Leave?” Her strange eyes clouded. “I don’t think I can…”

“Butterfly, you can and you must,” he said firmly. “Eat.”

She ate obediently, and when the bowl was empty he pulled back the blanket to help her up.

Her skirt was soaked with blood.

He was still staring, speechless, when the door opened and his mother, carrying Xiao Wan in her arms, paused in the entrance. “I thought we were in a hurry, A-Ning?” she said.

“This can’t be normal,” he managed.

His mother actually laughed. “Women bleed after birth!” she said. “There’s nothing special about her.”

“Call the servant back to clean her up so we can go,” he said, standing up. “I’ll carry her to the carriage.”

———

The journey was terrible. Xiao Wan, active and wild, could barely be restrained by her grandmother from dashing herself out the window. Butterfly, bundled up within an inch of her life by the servants at the instruction of her mother-in-law, lay with her head in Gan Ning’s lap, sleeping for much of the journey. Gan Ning ran his fingers through her hair and struggled to contain himself from clocking his mother.

How could he have been so blind as to not see that Butterfly had not been exaggerating when she said her mother-in-law hated her? He could see the jealousy and anger in every glance, now that he was actually bothering to see it. Even when she might be dying, his mother was acting like this!

When they were close enough to the destination not to have to worry overmuch about bandits, he told Chen Wei to go on ahead and get things ready, including to get Butterfly a doctor to make her medicine and to hire at least three _yuezi saosao_ servants to wait on Butterfly in her confinement so that she wouldn’t need to deal with her mother-in-law unless she was well again.

Until, until she was well again. She would get well again. He was doing all of this for her, so she had to… she had to…

———

He was holding her in his arms when she died. He didn’t know at what point she had died, but he went to sleep holding her and woke up holding her empty shell, so it must have been that way.

When she was still responsive, he had told her over and over again that everything would be fine, that he wouldn’t leave until she was on the mend, as her blood kept coming and coming, slowly but relentlessly.

“You’ll protect Xiao Wan, won’t you?”

“Of course I will. You’ll see me do it, Butterfly.”

“I mean if her stepmother mistreats her…”

“There won’t be any stepmother because you’re going to recover,” he had insisted.

“Husband…” she had said, “I know you do, but… but could you actually tell me you love me?”

“Not if that makes you think you’re allowed to die!” he had said, having to fight off the insane urge to shake her.

She had smiled, and closed her eyes. He thought she was just going to sleep. She needed sleep to get better. He drifted off at some point himself.

Now he was awake and she was gone.

“Butterfly, I do, I do love you. Forgive me, please, I love you.”

He whispered it to her body, hoping that her ghost was drifting close enough to hear.

———

He never spoke directly to his mother again.

Oh, she still lived in his home, on his money. He wasn’t quite that unfilial, and he wasn’t about to further traumatize Xiao Wan, who had just lost her actual mother, by tearing her away from the woman who acted as her mother. He knew that his mother’s affection for his daughter was genuine; she didn’t think of the girl as being anything to do with Butterfly.

He sent messengers to communicate with his mother. With her pride, she would never do anything to lose face like make a scene to a servant, and she was illiterate, so he didn’t have to worry about her writing a letter to him in her own hand.

Seeing Xiao Wan without having to see his mother was tricky, but he managed it. Always just brief visits, long enough to give his daughter candy and toys, to tell her she was beautiful, his treasure, his darling. She wouldn’t grow up like Butterfly, thinking she was worthless and expendable. She wouldn’t need her grandmother forever; when she was old enough, he’d take her with him and teach her everything.

He thought of marrying again, but how could he be sure that a stepmother would be kind? A stepdaughter was less of a threat than a stepson, of course, but even so. He suspected the whole fucking gender of pathological jealousy at this point.

Plus there was no way that there could be another woman on the planet who he would like fucking as much as Butterfly.

Chen Wei had actually offered to let him call him Butterfly while he sucked him off, the first time they had met privately after her funeral. It was the kindest gesture a friend had ever made, and the worst part was that he knew he could never share it with anyone else.

“Thank you Zijing,” he said, “but I’m not ready for it.”

“Well, the offer stands. Not permanently, ok, but for a while.”

He had tried calling him Butterfly only once, a few months later. Instead of feeling relief, he had begun sobbing without even finishing, and Chen Wei, without speaking any words at all, had simply held him until he fell asleep, both of them grateful that they were in spacious rooms in the Sun family compound, where such sounds wouldn’t carry.

They continued to be lovers but he never tried to call him Butterfly again.


	4. Chapter 4

“What the fuck is with that kid?” growled Gan Ning to Lü Meng.

“His name is Ling Tong.”

“Yeah, and? Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“His father was Ling Cao.”

“Ok, how many more generations do we have to go before we hit somebody I’ve heard of?”

“Don’t fuck around with me,” said Lü Meng. He came from as rough a background as Gan Ning, and while he had tried to educate and refine himself, something about the pirate brought that roughness right back to the surface.

“I’m not fucking with you,” he said. “Why does that kid hate me so much?”

“You killed Ling Cao at Xiakou,” he said.

Gan Ning squinted at the boy. “Oh, did I? Maybe I did. How does he know anyway? Wasn’t he still sucking his mother’s tit at that point?”

“Sun Quan has appointed him to lead the vanguard.”

“Him, really? Huh. I guess I better talk to him and straighten things out, if we’re gonna be comrades.”

Lü Meng could only watch in horror as the pirate strolled over to the young man, who gripped his three section staff so tightly that it seemed as if it must crack under the strain.

“Hey, I hear I killed your dad,” opened Gan Ning. “Uh, I don’t particularly remember it, but I’ve probably orphaned a ton of people by now. Anyway, since we’ve got to fight together, I just thought I’d come over and say thanks for getting over it.”

The young man was staring at him as if he couldn’t believe his ears, which was only natural. Lü Meng, who hadn’t come from the upper class background that Ling Tong had, couldn’t believe what he was hearing either.

“The only reason I don’t kill you right now is because our lord forbade it,” spat Ling Tong, when he had recovered from the shock.

Gan Ning laughed. “Pretty boy, you’d have to have the _ability_ to kill me before you could say something like that.”

“Pretty boy!” Ling Tong sputtered.

Lü Meng saw that Ling Tong was about to lose control and quickly separated the two. “Don’t either of you try anything fancy. Neither of you can dance as well as I can, and don’t forget it,” he said.

Gan Ning laughed, with every evidence of being truly in good humour. “Old man, I would love to see you dance with that pike some time. When we have our victory banquet, you better put on a show for the rest of us.” He gave a cheery wave to the grim older man and the furious younger one. “Well, see ya at the meeting.”

———

When Ling Tong had left with a few dozen men to lead an evening reconnaissance, Gan Ning had figured that would be the last he would ever see the kid. He had even magnanimously made himself busy below decks when they left. No need to piss off a man under a death sentence.

But the kid had come back, unscathed, covered with blood that wasn’t his own.

Gan Ning hadn’t even bothered to put his bells back on when the commotion of the return lured him from his bed. Without them on, in the darkness of the early dawn, it was like he was invisible. No one even seemed to realize he was there.

The old man was standing with his hands on the youth’s shoulders, praising him to the skies. The severed head of a man—Zhang Shuo, an enemy general—was between their feet.

Finally Lü Meng clapped Ling Tong on the back, said, “Ok, clean yourself up and get some sleep! And the rest of you, back to your beds as well! When Huang Zu finds out he’s lost his vanguard, he’ll panic and attack immediately, so we’ll all need to be ready to add some more heads to the collection Ling Tong started for us!”

Everyone had drifted off, but Gan Ning remained where he was, further hidden by the shadows just inside the doorway, but able to keep watching the kid.

Ling Tong clearly didn’t want to go to sleep. He called a cabin boy to fetch him hot water and towels, and started stripping down right there.

He really was a pretty boy, even with his hair matted with blood. His body was slim and lightly but tightly muscled. Gan Ning let his eyes drift to watch the youth’s ass as he walked over to the side of the boat where the ladder was, and leapt off.

Leapt off?!

The boat was docked, but as Gan Ning heard the splash he automatically kicked into man overboard mode anyway. He ran to the side of the boat and didn’t see the boy anywhere. Shit. _Shit!_ “Hang on, don’t panic!” he shouted, unwinding a rope quickly.

“Why the hell would I panic?” came that sulky, contemptuous voice, and he spotted the kid’s head, barely distinguishable from the waves in the dim light.

“You’re overboard,” said Gan Ning, rather stupidly. The youth was treading water, running his hands through his hair, scrubbing the worst of the blood out of it. “You know how to swim?”

“Of course I know how to swim. Fuck, this is cold, but it feels great.” He laughed and dived again towards the ladder.

Gan Ning grinned too, and backed up to put the rope back. As he heard the man climbing the ladder, he said, “Well, I can tell you’re not a naval man. It’s bad luck to know how to swim. Water doesn’t like it when you don’t fear it.”

Ling Tong’s head appeared over the railing, looked at Gan Ning for a brief moment, then suddenly the face contorted with furious recognition. “You!”

“Ah man, not this again,” said Gan Ning, finishing recoiling the rope. “Hey, don’t let me finish your blood high off for you. I was on my way back to bed, I just didn’t want you to die before we got the chance to duel. By the way, I know you feel like you’ll never sleep again, but if you get in bed and close your eyes, you might be surprised.”

He couldn’t resist one last look over his shoulder at the dripping, infuriated kid on his way back to his own bed, but the youth said absolutely nothing, just stared at him with hate. Gan Ning sighed.

When Gan Ning got back to their cabin, Chen Wei was just drifting back to sleep himself, but he shook him awake. “Suck me off now,” he whispered.

“Well good morning to you too,” muttered Chen Wei. “Take care of it yourself.”

“I’ve gotta fuck something right now or I’m gonna die,” groaned Gan Ning.

“What would you do if I wasn’t around?” growled Chen Wei, turning over and pulling the pillow over his face.

“Please, Zijing, please! I can’t take it.”

Chen Wei sighed and sat up. “Why do I let you treat me like this, Xingba?” he whispered as he groped for Gan Ning’s cock.

“Because you love me,” sighed Gan Ning happily.

Chen Wei instantly let go of his cock. “Don’t fuck with me like that, Xingba… it isn’t fair… who am I supposed to be this time, anyway?”

Gan Ning struggled to focus on his friend’s face in the near total darkness. It almost sounded like his friend was trying to keep from crying. He didn’t know how to respond.

“It’s that boy, isn’t it? The one whose father you killed. You motherfucker.”

“Zijing…”

“He’s very pretty, isn’t he? He already wants to kill you, I wonder how he’d feel if he knew that you were fantasizing about his lips around your cock… or maybe _he’d_ be good enough for you to enter?”

“Zijing, lower your voice,” he hissed.

His friend laid back down and buried his face in the pillow, and Gan Ning awkwardly reached out to rub his back. “You know I just don’t like fucking people in the ass… but if you want me to do it for you, I will…”

A muffled laugh, and the head turned slightly. “That’s what you took away from what I said, huh?”

“I don’t know what to say about the rest of it.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t. Forget about it.”

“You know I… I really like you, right? You’re my best friend.”

“Yeah, I’m always there for you.”

“You are, and I want to be there for you too.”

“Pity fuck me another time, Xingba. Let me go back to sleep now.”

———

Huang Zu had indeed panicked, but unfortunately he had a great natural choke point to defend from. After several hours of fighting, they hadn’t made any headway in damaging the two massive capital ships that were blocking the river, and they had lost some of their own best ships and men to the rocks thrown from the cliff and bolts fired by crossbowmen from the enemy vessels.

Lord Zhou Yu called together the senior officers for an emergency meeting.

“Seems to me like this is do or die time,” growled Gan Ning, out of turn, although the others knew he was completely oblivious to rules of protocol. “Huang Zu’s men only need one little setback to give up, even if they could still win if they held on. We just gotta deliver that one little setback.”

Ling Tong’s hands were twitching, but he was well-trained enough to wait for Lord Zhou Yu to say, “What is your opinion, Ling Tong?”

“My opinion is that it’s obvious,” he said with gritted teeth, “and instead of talking about the obvious, we should jump straight to talking about who should lead it. Obviously, since the commandant has the most naval experience, he should be the one.”

Zhou Yu glanced at Lü Meng, who said, “Ling Tong flatters me, but my experience in fighting on boats pales beside Gan Ning’s. What’s more, he’s not afraid of anything, and his courage will encourage the men to keep their heads even under the heaviest fire.”

Gan Ning actually waited for Zhou Yu’s nod this time. “Sure, it’d be my pleasure! But y’know, you should really give the kid another chance. It must be thrilling for a boy like him to have gotten his first enemy general’s head, and Chen Jiu’s would make a fine pair with Zhang Shuo’s.”

“The head I want isn’t Chen Jiu’s,” exclaimed Ling Tong, goaded beyond endurance.

“Ling Tong,” said Zhou Yu, with mild but evident reproach, and the young man flushed.

“I apologize,” he said stiffly, staring at the table.

“It seems to me that the three of you should lead this assault together,” said Zhou Yu calmly. “That way, if one of you is cut down, the others can keep the men from panicking and sustain the attack.”

Lü Meng kicked Gan Ning under the table as the pirate opened his mouth, and Gan Ning gave him a dirty look but said nothing.

———

It had taken a lot of convincing to get Gan Ning to submit to putting on armour, but it was either that or not go, so he did it. And when he was charging with the other men under the rain of rocks and arrows, he had to admit it was necessary.

He knew the battle was won when they reached the enemy’s capital ships. Those idiots, just like that last battle before he left for Sun Quan. Fooled by a flashy attack into forgetting about their numerical and tactical advantages; caring only about their individual lives, and dooming themselves to death because of it.

Lü Meng had the glory of actually killing Huang Zu’s remaining admiral, and after that it was just cleaning up, waiting for word from the land forces that Huang Zu and his other officers had been captured or killed.

“You sure can fight, old man,” Gan Ning said cheerfully, resting his arms on the railing next to him looking out over the river.

“Why are you always calling me that?” Lü Meng said. “I’m in my thirties.”

“Really?” Gan Ning looked him up and down. “You must have had a hard life, old man.”

“You impudent little fuck,” Lü Meng said, but he flicked Gan Ning’s head with affection. “You don’t have any respect for anything, do you?”

“I’ve got plenty of respect. I just said you can fight—you fight like ten devils. I’m somebody who says it like it is—you see, I know myself.”

Lü Meng chuckled. “So you been reading those books I gave you?”

“Would be pretty _disrespectful_ not to, old man. Plus, you know, I’m actually learning a lot. No wonder the Sun clan is still so strong, if they’re descendants of Sun Zi.”

“My lords!”

The men turned. A small boat was approaching, with a messenger aboard waving at them.

“What’s the word?” Lü Meng called down to him.

“Huang Zu, Chen Jiu, and Su Fei captured alive,” the messenger shouted up with his hands cupped around his mouth. “My lords, Su Fei requested that Gan Ning be told of his capture, and Lord Zhou Yu would like to know why.”

Lü Meng looked at Gan Ning.

“Oh, shit, oh shit!” said Gan Ning, wide-eyed. “I completely forgot about Master Su Fei! Shit. Good thing he said something, or… hang on, I’ll come back with you. Get to where I can jump on.”

“What’s the deal?” Lü Meng demanded.

“Master Su Fei’s the whole reason I joined the Sun clan in the first place. He told me I had no future with Huang Zu. I gotta beg for his life.”

“Xingba! You haven’t been with us long enough for that. You know that Lord Sun Quan already made boxes to hold Huang Zu and Su Fei’s heads?”

Gan Ning climbed up on the railing and readied to jump as the smaller boat drifted in range. “Well in that case I guess I gotta offer mine in its place.”

———

The atmosphere in the Wu headquarters was not the jubilant one of the new victors of a major campaign.

Lord Zhou Yu, who had summoned him, was wearing mourning clothes. He listened somberly to Gan Ning’s explanation of why Su Fei had asked for him, and nodded. “I thought it might be something like that. You can go.”

Gan Ning didn’t move. Hating it, he slowly dropped to his knees.

“I can’t pardon him,” Zhou Yu said. “Lord Sun Quan’s orders were very clear.”

“My lord, let me talk to Lord Sun Quan myself, then.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. You know Lord Sun Ce died in the night? Lord Sun Quan is in no mood for mercy.”

Gan Ning swallowed. “I didn’t know. But I’ve still got to try.” He pressed his face to the floor. “Please, my lord, you must let me try.”

There was silence for a while. When Zhou Yu spoke at last, he sounded tired to the bone. “If I let you try, I will not shield you from the consequences.”

Lord Sun Quan looked both heartbreakingly young and terribly aged, sitting in his brother’s chair, all in white. His bodyguard, Zhou Tai, had grown even taller than Gan Ning had expected of him as a youth, and had a scarred face now. Zhou Yu showed Gan Ning in but did not stay.

Gan Ning kowtowed until his face bled, begging for Su Fei’s life.

“I’d be dead in a ravine by now if it weren’t for Su Fei,” he cried. “I wouldn’t be able to serve you if it weren’t for him, my lord. I beg you to show mercy and pardon him of his crimes.”

“If I spare his life, how can I be sure he will serve me?” His voice was very flat, and Gan Ning didn’t dare look up to see his expression.

“My lord, I swear he’ll be grateful. He’ll be a loyal and good officer for you. If he ever betrays you, you can take my head to put in that box.”

“Your loyalty and gratitude move me.”

Gan Ning heard the sound of the chair moving and then quiet footsteps. His lord assisted him to stand up.

“I will spare him,” Sun Quan said, holding Gan Ning’s hands. “Xingba, do I ask too much to be given the same loyalty and gratitude you held for Su Fei? I know I will need it.”

Gan Ning kissed his fingers. “You already have it, my lord. I’m yours til death.”

———

“I’ve heard you’re familiar with these sections of the river.” The allied strategist, Zhuge Liang was smiling at Gan Ning, but it was not a friendly smile. It was more like an expression of amusement at the antics of a performing animal.

It made Gan Ning gruffer in his response. “Hell yeah, we spent a good year with these as our hunting grounds, didn’t we Zijing?”

Chen Wei, still never at ease around officials of any kind, managed to nod.

“Immoral, but highly informational,” Zhuge Liang said to Lord Zhou Yu.

Lord Zhou Yu was not smiling. “Yes, we are bringing great expertise on our side.”

“Great, but not complete,” Zhuge Liang said mildly. “But working together, we have everything we need for a victory that will become legendary.”

There was loud cheering from outside. They all walked to the window of the villa to look out.

The Wu princess was demonstrating the speed and accuracy of her shooting for an appreciative audience of Liu Bei’s officers, including Liu Bei himself, who was clapping as loudly as any of them.

“You show ‘em, princess!” Gan Ning yelled down. “Our women fight as well as their men!”

“Don’t encourage them to show off,” said Zhou Yu, and then, resigned, “Oh, heaven, there she goes.”

Zhou Yu’s wife, the younger Lady Qiao, usually just called “Xiao Qiao”, hadn’t been visible up until now because she was the shortest of the women. But she drew all attention when she tugged herself away from her older sister’s remonstrating grip and challenged Lady Sun to a duel.

“It is good that the Qiao family accepted your offer instead of the Cao’s. She would have never had such freedom with him,” Zhuge Liang said, watching the fight critically.

Zhou Yu’s mouth tightened, and Gan Ning chuckled. “You trying to rattle our strategist? Ain’t that counter to your own aims?”

Zhuge Liang looked at Gan Ning without that contemptuous amusement for the first time. “Let us say rather that I wanted to focus him.”

“We don’t need any outside help for that, thanks,” said Gan Ning, smiling back, raising his hands in a mocking bow. “My lord, if we are to focus, shouldn’t we get back to the subject of the river?” He pointed at the table. “The map’s wrong, for one thing.”

Another cheer distracted them all again. Xiao Qiao was pouting, while Lady Sun was fanning herself with her vanquished foe’s war fans.

“My lady, you are magnificent!” said Liu Bei, bringing his hands up to bow.

Zhuge Liang turned and swiftly walked away from the window. “You are right, we must focus.”

———

The alliance with Liu Bei had won massively over Cao Cao’s forces at Red Cliff. The time was ripe to seize more ground. And Lord Zhou Yu was honouring him with the opportunity to take a small force to seize Yiling. It would be another battle at a disadvantage, but hadn’t they just shown that odds didn’t matter?

When Gan Ning got out of the meeting, he was on a real high.

He was, admittedly, slightly drunk, as was usual at meetings led by Sun Quan.

He got back to the fleet and climbed onto the flagship, and swayed a little more than usual as he got his bearings. “Where’s Chen Wei?” he called to a sailor.

“In your cabin, sir, but, uh, I think he may be busy…”

Gan Ning latched onto _cabin_ and was already not listening to the rest of it. His bells probably gave away his approach, so when he opened the door to the cabin, he merely found his first mate and some common sailor flushed and half-dressed, instead of actively having sex.

“Can you give us some time, Xingba?”

“No,” said Gan Ning. “You, fuck off.”

The sailor didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled out of the cabin without even finishing redressing.

“What the hell,” Chen Wei said as Gan Ning pushed the door shut. “You had no right—”

He stopped because Gan Ning had already closed the short distance between the doorway and the bed and was pinning him to the bunk, kissing him passionately.

“What the hell,” said Chen Wei, in quite a different tone, as Gan Ning switched from his lips to his neck. “Xingba, you’re jealous?!”

“I’ll fuck you like I’m jealous,” Gan Ning growled into his ear. “Was he fucking your ass?”

“W-we hadn’t gotten that far…”

Gan Ning let go of Chen Wei’s wrists and rolled slightly off to undo his own clothing. “Good. Get me hard so I can fuck it for you.”

It didn’t take long. Chen Wei grabbed for the oil himself, lubing the hard cock with long, sensuous strokes.

“On your back and pull your knees up.”

Chen Wei obeyed, and Gan Ning kissed him again, pressing the pad of his index finger against the asshole until it relaxed, then readying the head of his cock there.

“Been a while,” he grunted as he pushed in. “Zijing, you feel so good.”

“Xingba…”

Gan Ning smirked at the dimly lit look of ecstasy on Chen Wei’s face.

“You don’t need any little fucker like that,” he said. “Could he fuck you this good? I already told you I’ll fuck your ass any time you want.”

“Xingba, shut the fuck up and kiss me.”

———

The Wei troops besieging Yiling were taunting the troops inside.

“No one is coming to rescue you,” was more or less the summary of their chant.

Gan Ning leaned with his arms crossed behind his head against a flag pole flying the Sun banner, a picture of relaxation. “Who even said we needed to be rescued?”

Another volley of arrows rained down, as if in answer.

Gan Ning spat on the ground. “Don’t return fire yet,” he called. “Unlike those idiots, we’re going to make our arrows count.”

“They’re bringing a ram!”

“Great, give me my bow then. Now we’ll have some shooting, boys!”

The siege went on, but Gan Ning’s calmness never wavered, and that kept order inside, despite how massively they were outnumbered and how very likely it was that there would be no reinforcements, despite the urgent request he had secretly sent out. He never lost his head, or did anything other than wait and endure.

So when reinforcements did come, it was to be expected that he had a lot of tension to work out, and he swept out of the gates and into the fray.

“If I fight like ten devils,” Lü Meng laughed as he watched Gan Ning obliterate an enemy cavalry officer who had fallen from his horse, “you surely fight like a hundred, Xingba!”

“Hey, what kind of devil bothers to warn people he’s coming?” The bells rang amongst the ding as he went after another opponent.

It was another decisive victory. Cao Ren lost three thousand men in a single day, which set the stage for his eventual loss of Jiangling.

But people die even in victories.

Gan Ning knelt by Chen Wei’s dead body.

He wasn’t even sure how he had died. He’d been reported among the missing, and not found in the field until the morning.

It was raining, so he let the tears flow. Who cared if anyone saw, anyway? He didn’t give a fuck.

His best and closest friend, from the day they met, at fifteen and sixteen respectively. Gan Ning felt like he had lost a limb.

As much as he loved being a part of the Sun forces, none of the officers were what Chen Wei had been to him. Not even close. How could they? Chen Wei understood him, accepted him, loved him…

“Yeah, I guess I fucking loved you too, you fucker,” Gan Ning muttered. “When I see you in hell I’m gonna kick your ass for leaving me like this.”

With that, he stared up at the rain, wiped his face, and put on a jovial expression to rejoin the others.

———

“Meimei, let me in.” Da Qiao called, fed up with the lack of response to her knocks.

“No! I hate you!”

“Fine, hate me, but you know I told because I love you—”

“Your love can bite me!”

“—I love you and I want what’s best for you and your baby. Lord Zhou Yu does too, that’s why he agreed with me that you shouldn’t fight anymore.”

“Go away! Lord Zhou Yu is furious with me and it’s your fault. I don’t want to sit around and sew with you. I’m going to just sit here and stare at this wall until this stupid baby comes and I can have a life again. I’m never trusting you with a secret again!”

“Now _you’re_ acting like a baby,” her sister said crossly. “We still have work to do. Work that is much more befitting our roles as wives.”

Da Qiao knew she was handing her sister a big opening to really hurt her back by referring to them both as wives, when one was a wife but the other was merely a widow, but there was silence on the other side of the door. Then her sister’s voice came again, sarcastically, but more subdued. “What is it? Prancing around to improve allied morale or something?”

“No, I think we should visit Master Gan Ning’s family. I have learned his child was hurt in an accident and I think it would be very kind to bring her a present while she recovers.”

There was another silence, and then the sound of the door unlocking.

———

Xiao Qiao had gotten a bit bratty about being the one to lead the visit, because she said this should be considered an official visit on behalf of Zhou Yu. This was skirting perilously close to rubbing Da Qiao’s face in Sun Ce’s death, so Da Qiao remained silent, rather than provoke her angry sister into saying something they would both regret.

The odd attitude of the servant who let them in told Da Qiao that something was very wrong, but her sister obliviously swanned away towards the room where the servant had stated she thought her master might be, without even waiting to be shown there. Since it was the very next room, she was too late to stop her from opening the door.

Gan Ning was crumbled against a wall. He was not now crying, but the tearstains on his face and his exhaustion made it seem like that was only because he had no tears left to cry.

The two women stared at him horrified for a moment, as he turned his face and silently regarded them.

Da Qiao recovered first, grabbed her sister’s shoulder and forced her into a bow with her. “I cannot apologize enough for our intrusion, Master Gan Ning. We were never here.” Then she grabbed her sister by the wrist and dragged her off.

Xiao Qiao didn’t even struggle, although she did shake her sister’s hand loose when they were out on the street again. “Shouldn’t we have asked about his daughter?”

“Can’t you see she must be dead?” hissed Da Qiao. “We had no right to intrude on his grief like that. Imagine how you would feel if your sons died, or Lord Zhou Yu, and some near strangers came in to stare at you—“

“Don’t say things like that!” said Xiao Qiao, clapping her hands over her ears. “Why are you so horrible to me ever since— ever since—“

“I hope you never find out,” she said.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of death and darkness in this chapter. I draw quite heavily from both history and non-Dynasty Warriors fictional sources here, while also changing things to suit my own dramatic tastes. However, I deliberately tried not to avoid the more appalling details of Gan Ning's history, including his killing of a kitchen boy.

The one pure thing in his life that he had to live for, and she was dead. Xiao Wan had been climbing trees, right under his approving eyes, the same as she’d done at his encouragement so many times. She was a little daredevil, and he was so proud of her spirit. But this time she'd slipped and fallen, and she never woke up.

He couldn’t even decide if that was a bad thing. At least if she was unconscious, she wasn’t in pain and afraid…

Yet how selfishly he wanted to have her look at him even one more time… to see the unconditional adoration in her innocent eyes…

Butterfly was gone. Chen Wei was gone. Now even Xiao Wan was gone.

Gan Ning went insane for a while.

Nobody really seemed to notice. Apparently it wasn’t all that different from his usual behaviour.

There was the sword dancing incident at the banquet, which he didn’t fully remember the next day, other than that Ling Tong wanted to kill him, and giving him the opportunity to do so seemed like a good idea to Gan Ning, but the old man spoiled it, just like he promised he would.

Fucking old man kept spoiling everything.

Then there was the serving boy that Gan Ning beat to death. Well, it should have been to death. Gan Ning had certainly intended it to be to death. The youth had stolen Butterfly’s butterfly knives and attempted to sell them, apparently under the impression that they were never used and thus wouldn’t be missed. It didn’t matter to Gan Ning that he had gotten them back. For some scum to even dare to touch something of hers!

But in the morning the corpse wasn’t where he had left it. He hadn’t been a corpse at all, and had fled to Lü Meng, in fact.

Gan Ning showed up at the old man’s house with a gift for Lü Meng’s mother and a smile. He listened to Lü Meng’s lecture about the necessity of passing all criminals to a magistrate, rather than inflicting punishments himself, with a smile. He listened to a description of the boy’s youth, inexperience, and remorse, all reasons to forgive and rehabilitate him, with a smile. He promised to be a good master from now on with a smile. He said goodbye with a smile.

He tied the boy to a mulberry tree by Lü Meng's house and shot him full of arrows with a smile.

And he sat in the boat he had used to travel there, unarmoured, his weapon well out of reach, waiting for Lü Meng, with a smile.

“Captain, Lord Lü Meng is coming,” said one of his men, “and he looks furious.”

“That’s just fine. You tell him where I am.”

He heard Lü Meng approaching and his smile got wider and wider until his face hurt from it.

Then he heard Lü Meng’s mother yelling, apparently having chased after him. Scolding her son about his debt to Sun Quan. Sun Quan treated Lü Meng like his own flesh and blood, and Gan Ning was of great value to their lord. So what if Gan Ning had improperly taken the life of a thieving serving boy—what right did that give Lü Meng to similarly improperly take the life of Gan Ning, who was ten thousand times as valuable to Wu? It would be wickedness, it would be hypocrisy!

And what was Lü Meng’s response? “Yes mother. You’re right mother.”

Fucking old man letting himself get pushed around by a fucking old woman! Gan Ning’s smile was completely gone. Why was heaven so fucking determined to keep a man like him alive? Why did it take away Xiao Wan, who never hurt anyone or anything, instead of him?

He heard Lü Meng’s footsteps creaking onto the boat, and then the old man’s face was looking down at him, with a forced smile, and then a forced laugh. “Xingba, my mother wants you to come and eat, so hurry up,” he said.

They stared at each other, directly in the eyes. Lü Meng’s eyes… they were so disappointed… as if he actually had expected something good of him… just like Xiao Wan had…

Gan Ning’s eyes filled with tears, and he looked away.

“I let you down,” he wept. “I let you down!”

Lü Meng watched him in silence as the pirate cried in an ugly and ridiculous way, snorting and wiping his nose on his bare arms.

At the meal, Gan Ning and Lü Meng both laughed a lot. There were a few other guests there, and one of them apparently was Sun Quan’s official historian. Gan Ning drained another cup of wine and wondered if he would make it into the history books, and if so what they would say about him.

———

“Why have you assigned Gan Ning to my tent?”

Lü Meng didn’t look up from his maps. “I’m sure you will bow in your own good time, Ling Tong.”

The young man flushed, but did a field obeisance hurriedly. Lü Meng still didn’t look up. Just when Ling Tong was about to ask again, Lü Meng said mildly, “He was the only one who didn’t ask _not_ to be in your tent.”

Ling Tong flushed even darker. “What are you talking about?”

“You talk in your sleep,” said Lü Meng, shifting some figures around on the map. “Sometimes when you have a nightmare you sit up and scream. Apparently it freaks people out.”

Ling Tong didn’t know how to respond to this. That he had had the habit of sleeptalking in childhood, he knew, but no one had ever brought it up that he was still doing it. He reddened a bit, wondering what people had heard him saying while unconscious. Anyway it wasn’t the point. “So why not put me in my own tent?”

“Even our lord is sharing his tent with Zhou Tai,” said Lü Meng, maddeningly still refusing to look up. “Do you think you deserve a privilege our lord does not take for himself?”

There was no good answer to that either. Ling Tong had the humiliation of leaving without ever having seen Lü Meng’s eyes leave his damn maps.

———

“I sleep naked,” announced Gan Ning cheerfully, as if it was a greeting, when Ling Tong entered their tent that night. “Will that bother you?”

“No,” said Ling Tong. Why was this bastard always acting like they were friends? “I don’t care what you do.”

“Great,” said Gan Ning, stripping down and getting on his camp bed. “Well, goodnight.”

Ling Tong didn’t return the goodnight as he undressed and blew out the candle before groping into his own bed.

———

Gan Ning woke up late at night, unsure of who was talking to him.

“Nggh, Lady Qiao…”

He looked over. It was Ling Tong’s voice, but the body was perfectly still.

“Lady Qiao, oh _fuck_ … faster…”

Gan Ning grinned, wondering which Qiao sister Ling Tong was with in his dreams and what he was doing to her there. The younger man suddenly grunted as his body briefly convulsed, and then was still. Gan Ning shook his head and rolled over.

———

Over the next few weeks, as they moved towards Hefei, Ling Tong’s sleeptalking turned out to be a nightly occurrence. Gan Ning was a light sleeper, but found it as easy to get back to sleep as to be awoken, so it didn’t bother him. About half the time, as far as Gan Ning could figure—the words didn’t always make sense—he was having some kind of sexual dream, which sometimes resulted in the younger man orgasming in his sleep, and sometimes not. Usually if he orgasmed he woke up, with Gan Ning feigning sleep and so far escaping detection, but occasionally he didn’t.

If named, the women in these dreams all had one thing in common: they were all completely unavailable. Practically unavailable, like the mourning Qiao sisters; unavailable and thousands of _li_ away, like Sun Shangxiang; unavailable and married to enemy officers, like Zhenji; unavailable and _dead_ , like Diaochan. Maybe Ling Tong had a craving for the unattainable.

The sexual partners were always women, which he couldn’t deny was a bit disappointing, even though he had suspected it would be that way. In his experience, even in the tolerant atmosphere of the pirate life, there were rare men who wouldn’t go for it with another man no matter what; then the majority, that would go for it with another man but only if women were not easily available; then there were uncommon men like himself, who more or less equally enjoyed men and women; and then the rarest group of all, those who didn’t enjoy women. Ling Tong, he concluded, was sadly one of the majority at best. What a waste… those lips, for one thing…

It was too risky for Gan Ning to touch himself while Ling Tong was having an erotic dream, but when the younger man woke up briefly, turned over, and went back to sleep, it was like an all clear. The memories of those noises fueled vivid sessions in his imagination. Would Ling Tong make similar noises when getting his cock sucked? He imagined looking up at that sulky face contorted in ecstasy and his own orgasm took no time at all.

The other half of the time it was more or less complete nonsense. Often coherent, but no less hilarious for that. Gan Ning discovered that if he said things to Ling Tong, Ling Tong would often seem to respond, and the results of that were even funnier.

“I don’t want to hunt for squirrels,” Ling Tong mumbled on one occasion.

“Why not? Squirrels are delicious.”

“Too many bones, cousin… So many bones…”

Gan Ning cracked up. “Then feed them to the dogs.”

“No more bones,” he mumbled, and then was silent.

Then the night before the disaster—though Gan Ning didn’t know it would be a disaster at the time—Ling Tong had had a nightmare.

When the scream woke him up, he thought it was a night raid and was out of bed and pulling on his pants immediately, his adrenaline spiking. He wasn’t afraid, he was thrilled. Night fights had been a regular part of his life as a pirate, and he had missed them.

But there was no commotion outside, and he paused in the act of tying his string of bells.

“Hey, Ling Tong, did you hear something?” he said, since the other man was sitting up.

“No,” said Ling Tong, but his voice was strained, trembling. “No, no, no, get away from me!”

Gan Ning laughed. “You’re having a nightmare, buddy.”

“Don’t come any closer,” Ling Tong snarled. “I’ll kill you!”

“Ling Tong, it was just a dream. You’re awake now, so get over it and go back to sleep,” grumbled Gan Ning, undoing his bells.

“No, don’t touch me—don’t touch me!”

Gan Ning’s head jerked at that. Ling Tong sounded absolutely petrified.

He slowly walked over so he could get a good look at the younger man’s face. The eyes were open, but like glass marbles. They weren’t focusing on Gan Ning or on anything. His face was coated with sweat.

“Just kill me, if that’s what you’re going to do,” the man gasped. “Stop… stop…!”

Ling Tong began to tremble from head to toe, and Gan Ning was actually frightened. “Ling Tong, you’re having a nightmare. No one is torturing you, it’s alright—“

He approached the younger man without him showing any signs of response, but as soon as his hand touched Ling Tong’s shoulder, the man switched instantly from a trembling mess to a wildcat.

His blows were unaimed, but that meant they were impossible to predict. If the first blow had connected, Gan Ning’s nose would have been broken for sure, and possibly worse than that. A blow did connect with his shoulder before he managed to scramble out of range, where he watched Ling Tong absolutely destroy his camp bed.

After a minute or so, he suddenly slowed and stopped, on his knees in the tangle of sheets, straw and dirt, panting. Then he rose to kneeling, and looked around.

“What the…”

“Ling Tong, are you alright?” said Gan Ning.

“I don’t… what happened to my bed?”

“You were having a nightmare.”

“What?” He turned and focused on Gan Ning, who was crouched in a defensive posture across the tent. “What are you doing over there like that? Were we attacked? Where’s the enemy now?”

Gan Ning gaped at him. “You really don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

“You went crazy!” shouted Gan Ning. “You were screaming and saying crazy shit. When I tried to shake you out of it you attacked me!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Ling Tong coldly. “You’re trying to get me in trouble again!”

“What?!”

“You couldn’t come up with a better story than this?” He began fixing, as best as he could in the near darkness, the bed, but it was impossible. “Oh, hell. How am I supposed to sleep here now?”

“You are a maniac,” Gan Ning said, not actually meaning much by it, but it set Ling Tong off like a fuse.

“ _I’m_ a maniac?” he hissed. “Mencius said the man who retreated 50 steps laughed at the one who retreated 100 steps, but _you_ calling _me_ a maniac… that’s like I’ve retreated ten steps and you’ve run a thousand _li_!”

Ling Tong’s upper class literary reference went right over Gan Ning’s head. “Are you calling me a coward?”

“My god, you’re too much of an _idiot_ to mock,” taunted Ling Tong. “No, I’m saying it’s absolutely beyond anything for you to call me a maniac, when I’ve never met someone who was more of an insane, bloodthirsty _motherfucker_ than you!”

“You think that will insult me? Seems like the stupid one around here is you!” Gan Ning laughed.

“You killed my father!” Ling Tong said, trembling with rage. “You know I’m not allowed to revenge myself on you! And yet you go out of your way to provoke me!”

Gan Ning didn’t back down. “What do you want me to do, apologize? Well I’m not going to! He was the enemy, so I killed him. Kill enemies, protect allies. That’s all I am!”

“What the fuck is going on in here,” Lü Meng roared, thrusting open the flap of the tent with a lantern swinging from one hand and his pike in the other. “Do you know what time it is?”

Gan Ning looked at Ling Tong, but the younger man said, “We were just talking.” Stubbornly he laid down on the dirty, torn mattress and pulled the sheet over himself. “Don’t worry about it.”

Gan Ning looked back at Lü Meng, laughed, and started to pull his pants off. “Ling Tong made a noise during a nightmare, I thought there was a night raid. Confusion solved. It’s fine now.”

Lü Meng looked skeptically at both men, lying in their beds with their backs to each other. “Everything’s fine?”

“Yes,” they both said simultaneously.

“Well if everything’s fine, don’t wake everyone up next time,” he growled, and left.

———

Gan Ning had lost his death wish just in time, because there were plenty of opportunities to fulfill it in the disaster that was the battle for Hefei.

There was no reason why they should have lost. There was every reason why they should have won. Wei was badly outnumbered, and everyone knew the enemy general Zhang Liao didn’t get along with his officers Li Dian or Yue Jin.

There was no reason that Zhang Liao destroying the bridge should have wrecked allied morale like it did.

Instead of a triumphant conquest, they were on the defensive almost immediately. They lost General Taishi Ci early. Another link to the era of Sun Ce, gone, and even Gan Ning saw how it affected Lord Sun Quan.

They nearly lost Ling Tong too. He was fighting on horseback against Yue Jin, and the Wei officer got in a lucky hit against Ling Tong’s horse, which threw the Wu officer.

Gan Ning, who had held his fire up until then to avoid hitting Ling Tong, raised his bow and fired.

It wasn’t quite as good as his shot that got Ling Cao in the throat, but then Yue Jin was wearing a neck guard, so maybe that was for the best. Instead it pierced his cheek. The Wei officer dropped his weapon in the shock, and the horse charged past Ling Tong and around.

The Wu and Wei soldiers rushed forward to rescue their respective generals and get them away.

Lü Meng pulled Ling Tong onto his own horse. “You alright?”

“Yeah, just bruised,” he said. “Who fired that shot? Really saved my neck out there.”

Lü Meng grunted. “You’re not gonna wanna hear it.”

Ling Tong looked at Gan Ning in disbelief. “You?”

“You already know I’m a good shot,” Gan Ning said, but this time, for once, he didn’t smile. They stared at each other, Ling Tong’s eyes wide, Gan Ning’s sober. “Kill enemies, protect allies.”

“Let’s get you another horse,” Lü Meng said, urging his own horse back to their supply line.

———

Eventually their triumphant conquest was nothing more than a scrambling effort to get away, and they couldn’t even do that right. Their own lord was left in critical danger. Zhang Liao, appearing where he couldn’t possibly appear, yet again.

Ling Tong knew the men well he gathered to go on their desperate rescue of Lord Sun Quan. His first unit, most of them. Many of them had served his father before him and had helped him grow into a man. They had fought together at Chibi and at Xiakou. Though he was an officer and they were commoners, he valued them deeply. They were his most trusted men, and they all trusted him in turn.

And he led them to their deaths, every one of them.

They forced open a path for their lord to escape. Zhang Liao was fighting with a fury to get at his prey. The enemy general clearly wanted Lord Sun Quan’s head.

One by one, Ling Tong’s men fell around him. He knew their names. He recognized the voices of the death cries.

Oh, enemy soldiers were falling too, but not enough, not nearly enough to make up for how outnumbered they were.

_I’m going to die here too. And will even that buy enough time for Lord Sun Quan to escape?_

He kept fighting. By some miracle, Zhang Liao didn’t seem to notice him particularly, maybe because he looked more like a ruined common soldier than a noble officer. It was a shameful thought.

He stumbled over the corpse of an enemy and tumbled down a hill, landing at the bottom with a thump.

Ling Tong got up unsteadily. He’d had the breath knocked out of him, and he’d gotten knocked out of his battle trance as well. He looked at the sun in the sky. It was so low… surely his lord had gotten away by now…

He looked back up the hill. “Is that all of them?” an enemy soldier was shouting.

“I think so,” yelled one, while another shouted, “Wait, there’s still one down there!”

_I’m the only one left!_

Ling Tong ran, no direction in mind other than south _._

———

Gan Ning saw Ling Tong struggling in the water.

“Stop the boat!” he screamed to Lü Meng at the rudder. “It’s Ling Tong!”

Lord Sun Quan, sitting on the deck with his head in his hands, looked up. The demoralized crew became a frenzy of activity.

“Tie the rope to me!” Xu Sheng shouted at Gan Ning, who was quick to obey. He dived into the water and grabbed onto Ling Tong. “I’ve got him! Pull us in!”

Lord Sun Quan himself leapt up and began helping Gan Ning and the others heaving in the rope.

Ling Tong spat blood and river water onto the deck on his hands and knees. Lü Meng was hurriedly pulling off his waterlogged and ruined armour and clothing. Ling Tong struggled to his feet with the other officer’s assistance to take off his lower body clothing. The body revealed was bruised, punctured, sliced.

It was a horrible inversion of that proud boy who stood flawless on the boat in Jiangxia with his first enemy officer’s head at his feet and stripped bare for a victory dive. But Gan Ning's gaze was just as riveted.

Lord Sun Quan pulled off his own coat. Tears were falling from his eyes. “Ling Tong, you’re alive,” he choked out, wrapping Ling Tong’s naked body in his own coat.

Ling Tong looked back at his lord, and tears were streaming from his face as well. “I’m the only one. I lost them all… I couldn’t save even one of them… They trusted me and now…”

Lord Sun Quan cradled Ling Tong as his officer sobbed. Their lord closed his eyes. “I know… I know exactly…”

“Don’t everyone stand around staring at them!” Lü Meng barked. “Wei’s still chasing us, if you forgot!”

Gan Ning pulled his gaze away with difficulty and went back to scouting the rear. As the deck went back to some semblance of normal, he heard Lü Meng add, “My lord, get Ling Tong below deck at once.”

“Of course… can you walk, Ling Tong? …Ling Tong?”

Gan Ning couldn’t resist turning his head back. Ling Tong had fainted.

———

Ling Tong slipped in and out of consciousness during that entire wretched flight from Hefei.

“…internal bleeding… even if we could…”

“…probably infected…”

“I won’t leave his side.” Lord Sun Quan’s voice, so clear at one moment. “Give me the ointment, I’ll do it.”

Another time, nothing but murmurs, and then Gan Ning’s voice, loud and clear: “Don’t talk bullshit! If Yue Jin and Zhang Liao couldn’t kill him, you think some shitty little wounds can do it? Why don’t you give him something worth waking up for, like some wine?”

It was all so wretched… when he was awake, he only yearned to sleep.

“Stay with me, Ling Tong,” his lord commanded, “you need to drink this.”

He struggled to keep his eyes open long enough to drink down the awful medicinal soup. When Lord Sun Quan laid him back down, he didn’t close them right away.

“Gan Ning’s right,” he said, his voice sounding strange and far away to himself. “I’d rather have wine.”

Lord Sun Quan’s blurry face was so happy. “When we get back to Jianye, you’ll have all the wine you can drink!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idiom that Ling Tong quotes from Mencius, 五十步笑百步, is similar to the English one about "the pot calling the kettle black."
> 
> The amazing scene where Ling Tong fights to rescue Sun Quan until all his men die, swims to safety, and weeps with Sun Quan is from historical sources and is one of my favourite stories about him.
> 
> The next chapter should be the final one, bringing the story up to the point where my other story _Clouds and Rain_ begins.


	6. Chapter 6

Gan Ning was sitting on the deck, playing dice with himself, his left hand against his right hand, and talking to the old man about what he would do the next time they faced Wei. Well, more talking at Lü Meng’s back than to the man himself. Lü Meng had been staring out at the river without any response to any of his ravings for the past hour.

They were only about three hours out from Jianye now, but Gan Ning’s mind was still back in Hefei.

“And then I’ll find out where every one of them is from… set their hometowns on fire and circle ‘em—”

“Why?”

Gan Ning looked up from the die. “Fuck do you mean, why? When you set a house on fire, you circle it so you can shoot anyone who tries to escape. Never done it to a whole town, but shit, it’s gotta be the same principle.”

Lü Meng snorted, but didn’t turn away from the water. “No. I meant why set their hometowns on fire?”

“The fuck? Because I’m gonna annihilate them, that’s why! I don’t even want anyone to remember they existed!” He picked up the die and tossed it from one hand to the other.

“What good will that do?”

Gan Ning suddenly reared his arm back and pitched the die so that it whistled past Lü Meng’s head and into the Yangtze. “Don’t get moral with me now old man! It’s not the time.”

“There is no other time than the present.” Lü Meng had made no reaction to the missile.

“Don’t tell me you’re suddenly becoming a Taoist. I ain’t got the time to read a whole other set of books.”

Lü Meng laughed softly again, and shook his head a little. “Once again, that’s not what I meant.”

“Well shit, tell me then!”

“You’ll figure it out soon enough.” Lü Meng turned. “Look, Xingba, you’re not stupid, and I know there is a sense of right and wrong under all those tattoos somewhere. It’s a dangerous time and we’ve had to do dangerous things. But at some point it’s gotta end.”

“Sure, it’ll end when I take ‘em all out!”

“If we had let Ling Tong take you out, who would have saved him from Yue Jin?”

“He… well…” Gan Ning tried to recover his bluster. “It’s a stupid question, because if we ever did fight to the death, I’d have won!”

“Ah. You’d have killed Ling Tong. And then where would our lord be?”

“Gah…” Gan Ning crossed his arms and screwed up his face, because he’d known mid-sentence that was exactly what Lü Meng would toss back at him. “What’s your motive, old man? Don’t you want my blood running hot the next time we tango with Wei?”

“That’s never a problem with you.” Lü Meng smiled. “Listen, Xingba. It’s a set-back, but all isn’t lost. Our lord… he needs optimism more than revenge. When we _do_ win against Wei, and gain prisoners and territory… we will need to treat them fairly. Integrate them into Wu, and increase our strength.”

“You take all the fun out of everything,” Gan Ning grumbled.

Lü Meng’s smile broadened. “But you get it, don’t you.”

It wasn’t a question. Appallingly, Gan Ning felt himself blushing under this unconventional, sideways praise, the words so mild that anyone else would have hardly recognized it as a praise at all. He pressed a hand over the lower half of his face and looked down, trying to play it off like he was just scratching his chin in thought.

“Keep reading those books I gave you, alright? _All_ of them.”

Gan Ning sighed, but nodded.

“Good. I won’t need them back.”

Before Gan Ning could think how to respond, Lü Meng was already walking away. He scrambled to his feet. “Old man! But…!”

Lü Meng was going below decks, as if he couldn’t hear him.

———

Gan Ning knocked on the door of Ling Tong’s room in Jianye, a week after their return.

“Yes?”

“It’s me, uh, Gan Ning. I heard you wanted to see me?”

The door opened. Ling Tong was standing. His face was paler and thinner, and there were still fading bruises and healing cuts poking out of his clothing. His right arm was in a sling. “Come in.”

The room was set up for an invalid. There was a bowl of lotus flowers on the table and an artful arrangement of peonies and bamboo by the window; bolsters upon the bed to allow the recovering patient to recline comfortably, with a good position to look out the window; a side table on each side, one crowded with medicine, the other currently holding only a book; another little lap tray table on the bed itself, with another book; and a little shrine in the corner for Shennong, the god of medicine.

“I uh, I brought you some tangerines,” Gan Ning said, self-conscious, which was highly unusual for him and thus even more uncomfortable.

“Might as well give them to Lord Shennong,” Ling Tong said, already getting back into bed. “The doctors say I shouldn’t be alive at all, so I must be on his good side somehow.”

“You’re just saying that because you wanna see me kneel before somebody,” Gan Ning grumbled, but he did a tolerable if unenthusiastic presentation of the tangerines to the little offering bowl before the figure of the god.

“It’s a bonus, I won’t deny it,” said Ling Tong when he had finished and got up, and gestured for Gan Ning to take the chair that was set up for visitors.

Gan Ning sat in the chair and looked at Ling Tong.

Ling Tong stared out the window. “Listen, I asked you stop by because…. I wanted to… thank you, and apologize—”

“Ah, hell, stop that.”

Ling Tong looked away from the window and at Gan Ning. “What?”

“Don’t apologize! I already said I wasn’t going to apologize for killing your dad. If you apologize just for being a dick to me when I haven’t apologized for killing your father, then I’m the shithead.”

Ling Tong snickered. “I bet you were born a shithead.”

“Ha! See, you’re learning new words from me.” Gan Ning grinned. “If it weren’t for your knowing how to swim, you could almost be a pirate.”

“You idiot.” Ling Tong’s smile was warm. “Do you play _xiangqi?_ ”

“Sure, I’m great at it.” Gan Ning hadn’t played _xiangqi_ in years. “Best of five?’

“Yeah, if you’re sure you only want to play three games. The board’s in that cupboard there, if you don’t mind getting it.”

“Well, I don’t think your ego could take being beaten more than three times in a row,” Gan Ning countered.

Gan Ning lost three times in a row, but his ego was fine with it, though he of course had to say, “Obviously I can’t go too hard on a recovering man.”

“Obviously,” snickered Ling Tong, not fooled, and yawned.

“You need your rest. Hey, you’ll let me know when you’re really better, right? We oughtta have a contest on something that counts, like a spar.”

“I’ll beat you at anything anytime,” Ling Tong said, but yawned again as Gan Ning put the game away.

“Y’need anything?” Gan Ning said, gruff to hide his concern.

“Just close the door behind you,” Ling Tong said, settling back and closing his eyes.

Gan Ning let himself gaze at the other man for longer than he probably should have before he left.

———

Oh, how Gan Ning had missed night fighting.

Wei’s camp defences at Ruxukou were set up only with the idea of spotting a large attack. It apparently hadn’t occurred to Cao Cao that anyone would be crazy enough to try to sneak into a camp of four hundred thousand with a hundred men.

Well, pirates were used to taking crazy chances. Gan Ning picked only former pirates for this raid, those who had sailed with him or similarly wild bandits like Jiang Qin and had now gone semi-straight as part of the Wu army.

They slid silently through a gap between watchmen and spread about their deadly business, slitting throats of men sleeping in their camp rolls to start. Did quite a bit of damage that way.

Eventually, of course, one was spotted and an alarm was raised. His men, already spread widely across the camp, changed their tactics instantly from silent assassination to causing utter mayhem: lighting fires, setting horses and livestock free, smashing water jars that could be used to fight the fires.

Because the enemy force was so massive, the enemy couldn’t instantly pick out the Wu raiders as foreign. Gan Ning himself had an officer bark at him to go alert the guard of the rams, helpfully pointing in the direction to go. Gan Ning killed the sole, scared guard and took a lot of pleasure making sure that every ram was ablaze before he left.

For the last stage he had to rely on his men having the good judgment to judge that the chaos had gone as high as it could go, and get out.

He was one of the last out, and he ran all the way back to the Wu camp out of the sheer joy of it.

“Beat the drums! We fuckin’ did it, boys!”

He grabbed a stick himself and joined in the pounding from the top of a guard tower. The entire Wei camp was lit up brightly and full of confusion and smoke.

All one hundred of his men made it back alive. Gan Ning howled with laughter. “That’s gonna drive ‘em fucking crazy! They didn’t even catch one of us! How long until they even figure out we’re really gone? They’re gonna be wondering if we’re hiding around every corner.”

Lord Sun Quan came out himself, his other officers following in his wake. “Xingba!” he yelled up. “Did you scare the old man?”

“He’ll need a clean loincloth, my lord,” Gan Ning yelled down.

Sun Quan laughed. “Cao Cao has Zhang Liao, but I have Xingba. I can oppose him.”

———

Damn it felt good to be the ones laughing while the enemies ran away.

“Alright,” Lü Meng said with satisfaction as they surveyed the retreating Wei forces. “That’s taught ‘em we’re not going to just roll over and take it.”

“We haven’t taught ‘em half enough for me. I’m high enough that I feel like attacking Hefei again right now!” Gan Ning crowed.

“Idiot,” said Ling Tong, but with no heat at all, and Gan Ning saw Lü Meng’s smile as the old man glanced between the two of them. “The more important thing for the near term is that we’ve kept them busy just like we told Shu we would. If they’ve gotten what they wanted in the west, then it’s more than time for them to give us Jing province back.”

“If they won’t give it to us, then we’ll just take it back ourselves, nothing to it! Right old man?”

“One victory at a time, Xingba,” Lü Meng said, and his smile looked somehow sad.

———

Another winter came. It was snowier than usual, both in frequency and intensity.

Wu officer Ding Feng, walking through a drift, paused to intone:

 _The year surely draws to a close in coldness.  
The crickets’ cry at dusk is desolate,  
__the speed of the cold wind too harsh._  
_The wanderer—_

His melancholy poetry recital abruptly stopped when he was hit with a snowball.

“An ambush?” he chuckled, forgetting poetry for the moment, and began scooping up snow to return fire at Gan Ning.

Gan Ning ran, which ought to have given Ding Feng a clue that something funny was up, but he took the bait and pursued him around the corner, and thus ended up directly in a pincer attack—blizzard style. A group of his fellow former pirates whooped like children as they rained down snowy destruction. Gan Ning, cackling madly, went running further to try to lure more hapless victims into their snow fort trap.

“Xingba!” Lü Meng’s voice came from a doorway. “Over here!”

Gan Ning cheerfully went inside, shaking himself off like a dog as Lü Meng closed the door behind him.

“Look at the mess,” reproached Lü Meng, “Is it impossible for you to even pretend to be civilized?”

“Hey, I’ve come pretty far, old man,” Gan Ning said. “Look, I’m even wearing a coat so I don’t freeze my nipples off.”

“I want to introduce someone to you, though I don’t blame him if he declines the acquaintance. This is Master Lu Xun.”

“Oh?” Gan Ning looked at the young man. He was an extremely young man, probably about eighteen, he thought. His clothing was suitable for the weather, not fancy in material but well-cut to his frame. “We’ve met, haven’t we?”

“I’m flattered that you remember, Master Gan Ning,” the young man said, bowing.

“Don’t be too flattered, I can’t remember where.”

Lu Xun didn’t look offended. “I was an ordinary soldier in the ranks attacking the Wan county storehouse. I had the opportunity of seeing your valour with my own eyes.”

“Oh yeah, that,” Gan Ning said, remembering the thrill of being the first over the wall. “That was a great fight.”

“I took notice of Master Lu Xun’s potential there,” Lü Meng said, “and recommended that our lord send him to deal with some banditry problems in the south, which was why he was not with us in Hefei. He’s proved himself and then some, and just in the right way and the right time too. He’s not going to be understood for a while, but I want you to understand him.”

Gan Ning regarded the young, slim man for a moment. “I get it, I think,” he said slowly. “He’s got no reputation, right? And damn, he’s so young. So that’s a big advantage because that means if you send him as a commander he’ll be underestimated. But it’s a disadvantage because his own men may not have confidence in him. You want me to take it on trust that he’s the real deal.”

Lü Meng grinned. “Well, at least you’re demonstrating to Master Lu Xun that you, also, have hidden depths.”

Gan Ning waved that away. “Sure, old man, I’ll believe you. Where are you sending us?”

“No one’s going anywhere as long as this snow holds up,” Lü Meng griped. “Xingba, even the people who don’t like you around here still know that if an ass like _you_ respects someone, they must really be worth respecting. You get me?”

“I get you, but it’ll be easier for me to respect him if I’ve gone a couple of rounds with him.” Gan Ning eyed Lu Xun’s blades speculatively.

Lü Meng groaned. “You’re just hoping you can find another sucker who’s willing to let you raise welts on him with that horrid wooden flail in practice.”

“I would be honoured to spar with you, Master Gan Ning,” Lu Xun said.

Lü Meng shook his head and patted Lu Xun on the shoulder. “Invest in first aid supplies in advance.”

———

Usually the first signs of spring are thought to be symbols of hope, lightening the mood darkened by cold and long nights.

This spring was not like that.

Warmth slammed into Jiangdong more like a slap to the face than a gentle reawakening. And yet the northern wind blew incessantly.

Lü Meng and a bunch of others had gone on some kind of hush hush thing. The old man had gone to pat Gan Ning on the shoulder and then, at the last moment, made it an awkward hug. Gan Ning had been too shocked to hug him back before the old man was already off.

Something weird was happening.

One evening, Gan Ning sought out some female company to take his mind off things, and spent a good hour coaxing a woman who was clearly up for fun but cautious of his tattoos into a state of high arousal. Just when he judged that she was about ready for him to seal the deal, a smooth voice interrupted their conversation.

“Is this ruffian bothering you, miss?”

She turned as if to politely disclaim, but snapped her mouth shut without speaking when she saw the speaker. Her eyes raked him up and down. All at once, she was a damsel in distress. “Oh yes! I just didn’t know how to get away from him!”

“I thought so.” Ling Tong offered her his arm, and she leapt up from the inn table to take it. “Please, allow me to take you home.”

“Ling Tong, you are a fucking _thief_ ,” Gan Ning shouted after them.

“You started it!”

Gan Ning sighed irritably.

Han Dang chuckled, taking the now vacant chair across from him. “What did he mean by that?”

Gan Ning looked at the notoriously insecure veteran. Not exactly the kind of company he’d hoped for, but hell, maybe he could stick him with the tab. “I challenged him a while back about who could bag the most women. We’ll see how well he does after I knock all the teeth out of that pretty smile tomorrow.”

“Nice to see you two getting along so well. You know, I didn’t agree with Lord Sun Ce letting you join back in the day… not that anyone seemed to pay attention…” He briefly looked murderous, then reverted back to his bland cheer. “You’ve certainly proved me wrong. You fit right in with us now.”

Despite his irritation, Gan Ning couldn’t help smiling at his nearly empty cup of wine. “Yeah. I like it here plenty. Been quite a ride.”

A pair of merchants burst into the inn, interrupting their excited chatter to yell at the innkeeper for food and a room.

“Well all I can say is it’s about time,” the taller man said to his companion. “I hope they finish the job quickly. It’ll make my profit on rice go up by at least ten percent, probably much more.”

“Rice hell,” said the shorter one, rubbing his hands together. “If Lord Sun Quan can push the border past Yiling, there’s a fine turquoise mine I know of. I can pick up brocade here in Jianye and make bank both ways.”

“What are you talking about,” Gan Ning interjected.

The merchants, who had been oblivious to the other customers up until then, looked at him and his tattoos and went white.

Gan Ning laughed and gestured to his bells. “I haven’t been after small fry like you for quite a while.” 

The two men began bowing. “My lord Gan Ning,” the taller one said, “we were simply discussing the imminent success of Lord Sun Quan’s campaign in Jing province.”

Gan Ning glanced at Han Dang, who looked just as clueless. For once, he chose his words carefully. “Going well, eh? You just come from out there?”

“From Changsha, my lord,” said the shorter one. “The mood out there is wonderful. Lord Lü Meng has already conquered much, and he keeps a strict rein on his soldiers, so that they never oppress the people. They say Guan Yu is losing soldiers to defection daily.”

“Lord Lü Meng’s health is very bad though,” the taller one said, shaking his head sadly. “Why else would he make that stripling do so much of the legwork? But as long as the true commander is Lord Lü Meng, I believe all will be settled by Tomb-Sweeping Day!”

“You’re dreaming if you think a man at death’s door can contend with the God of War,” said another merchant who had come in during the taller man’s speech, and clearly thought he was just joining in on a gossip session.

“Death’s door?!” Gan Ning surged to his feet, and Han Dang feebly waved his hands at him to calm down. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

The newcomer took one look at Gan Ning and promptly fled.

“My lord,” said the innkeeper, a kindly matron that Gan Ning had a soft spot for, “you know you’re always welcome here, but please don’t scare off my customers.”

“This night is bullshit,” growled Gan Ning and stalked out.

———

It was all too true.

The mood in the capital when birds brought word of the victory was as bad as that following Hefei. Worse, even, somehow. After Hefei, they had been demoralized, yet defiant, eager to prove that they were better than this.

This time… the problem this time was that they had given their best, and it had won, but the victory had cost more than they could afford to pay. Their old nominal allies Shu had forced them into a secret alliance with Wei, but everyone involved had known going into it that Wei was if anything more hostile to Wu’s existence than Shu.

And now Lü Meng was dead.

Gan Ning sat in his rooms in Jianye, pulling a book that Lü Meng had given him on the shelf, leafing through it, putting it back, selecting another.

Had Lü Meng known his time was so short even back then? He hadn’t seemed ill…

He opened the copy of the _Analects_ to the middle.

_Confucius said, “You cannot serve men. How can you serve ghosts?” He was then asked about death. Confucius said, “You don’t know life. What do you know of death?”_

_One disciple of Confucius was very calm, another very active, two more were very charming. The Master rejoiced: “Those like the active one, will not obtain their death naturally.”_

Gan Ning blinked and leaned back so as not to get tears on the pages. “This is the fucker you want me to learn from, old man?” he told the ceiling.

There was a knock at the door, and Gan Ning got up and threw the door open.

The messenger stepped back a little, startled, then bowed. “Lord Sun Quan intends to hold a grand banquet to honour the glory of the returning general Lu Xun in a week’s time. He asks, sir, that you make the necessary preparations.”

“Dress robes, huh?” Gan Ning sighed. “Do you think I can get away with something old?”

“Between you and me, sir,” the servant said quietly, “I wouldn’t want to catch our lord’s attention right now for any reason.”

Gan Ning shook his head. “I won’t say you’re wrong. Well, a banquet always lifts the mood, right? I’ll look forward to the wine, anyway. Thanks for the head’s up.”

He closed the door, walked back to his desk, and put the _Analects_ back on his shelf, but paused with his hand still on its spine.

He pulled the book back out, sat down, and continued reading from where he had left off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All translations from classical Chinese are my own. The poem is one from the collection called _Nineteen Old Poems_. The translation from the Analects is a paraphrase to make the quotation more understandable out of context.
> 
> This story closes where my novel-length fic _Clouds and Rain_ begins.


End file.
